
Class_ZS.L 



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COPYRIGHT DEPOSIT. 



ORIENTAL STUDIES 





ORIENTAL 
STUDIES 


BY 

Lewis Dayton Burdick 

Author of "Magic and Husbandry," etc. 


OXFORD, N. Y. 

THE IRVING COMPANY 

1905 





" 



SB** 



LIBRARY of CONGRESS 

Two Copies Received 

JAN 9 1906 

Copyright Entry 
&*•«. 9. I '9^6 
#LASS Ck. XXc. No. 

/ 3 tri s~g- 

COPY BT 






Copyright, 1905, 



Lewis Dayton Burdick 



PRESS OF 

The Herald Company of Binghamton 

binghamtoh, n. y. 






X 



"For ages, myths have all been deemed as true; 
Egyptian, Parsi, countless others too, 
Believed successive creeds that died. — We love 
A pleasing falsehood, whether old or new." 

— "The Chazal of Men n Mirza," John S. Zimmerman. 



" In reverent hands we hold 
Each message from the Past, and fain would try 
Through myriad fragments dimly to descry 
The living glories of the Age of Gold." 
— William Cranston Lanvton in " The Atlantic Monthly." 



CONTENTS 

Chapter Page 

I Antiquity of Our Ethical Ideals . . 3 

II Some Variants of the Tale of the Kings 45 

III Notes on Faiths and Folk-Lore of the 

Moon 73 

IV Epics Before the Iliad 107 



ANTIQUITY OF OUR 
ETHICAL IDEALS 



ANTIQUITY OF OUR ETHICAL 
IDEALS 

The assertion has been often made, and sel- 
dom denied, that the ethical code known as the 
Mosaic Law forms the groundwork of the civil 
and moral laws of all enlightened nations. It 
will not be denied that this is in a sense true, yet 
it is quite certain that the enunciation of this 
statement has often led to conclusions unwar- 
ranted by a survey of historical facts. 

According to Biblical history and common tra- 
dition, it was in the third month after the depar- 
ture of the Israelites from Egypt that Jahveh, 
descending upon Mount Sinai amidst thunder 
and lightning, fire, and smoke, covenanted with 
Moses and established these laws, while the 
Hebrews with fear and trembling stood around 
the base of the mountain which they were for- 
bidden to touch. 



4 ANTIQUITY OF OUR ETHICAL IDEALS 

" And Moses turned, and went down from the 
mount, and the two tables of the testimony were 
in his hand ; the tables were written on both their 
sides; on the one side and on the other they were 
written. 

" And the tables were the work of God, and the 
writing was the writing of God, graven upon the 
tables." 

Preliminary to further discussion of the sub- 
ject of this article, it may be stated briefly that 
the world has no knowledge at the present time 
either of the Exodus or its leader outside of the 
records and traditions of the Hebrews. When 
Moses lived is one of the unsolved problems of 
history. We have grown familiar in recent years 
with the annals, literature, and social life of 
times and people of which the world once 
knew but little; we have revised our knowledge 
of ancient nations by a comparative study of 
the traditions and records of their contem- 
poraries; we know their greatness and their 
weakness; we have followed the march of their 
commerce and their conquests; we have searched 



ANTIQUITY OF OUR ETHICAL IDEALS 5 

their temples and rifled their tombs: but what 
light has been thrown upon the story famil- 
iar from childhood — that of the cruel bond- 
age and the perils of the Exodus? No Egyptian 
monument, tomb, or inscription has yet revealed 
aught of its marvelous hero. It is not known 
when the departure from Egypt took place, or in 
whose reign it occurred, and no trace of the 
Hebrews in Egypt has yet been found in Egyptian 
story. 

Until February, 1896, there was no evi- 
dence, other than that found in the traditions of 
the Hebrews, that the Egyptians had any knowl- 
edge of such a people. But in that year Pro- 
fessor Petrie discovered at Thebes a black Sye- 
nite tablet in the funeral temple of Merenptah, 
the son and successor of Rameses the Great. This 
stele commemorated a victory of that monarch 
over the allied forces against him in the fifth 
year of his reign; and the Israelites are named 
among the nations — eight in all, — with whom 
he contended. This battle was fought in Syria, 
in the vicinity of Galilee. The message of the 



. -■/_. 



^SSSSBmSBBSSSBBBSBSSSSS^m 



i. 



D ANTIQUITY OF OUR ETHICAL IDEALS 

tablet in substance is that the Israelites were de- 
feated and lost their supplies. The reign of 
Merenptah was quite commonly accepted, before 
this stele was found, as the period of the departure 
of the Hebrews from Egypt; but this record 
shows that in the fifth year of his reign this 
people were a full-fledged nation fighting with 
the allies in Palestine ; so that instead of throwing 
light upon the hegira from Egypt, it has made the 
study of the question even more complicated. If, 
however, we assume as a hypothesis that the ca- 
reer of Moses as a leader began early in the reign 
of this Pharaoh, it would date about the begin- 
ning of the thirteenth century before the Christian 
era. 

It was long held to be true that the sacred 
story of the origin of these divine laws was writ- 
ten in the lifetime of Moses, and by his own in- 
spired hand. Modern critical scholarship has 
carried the authorship, or editorship, of the books 
of the Pentateuch forward some eight centuries, 
to a period subsequent to the Babylonian cap- 
tivity; when, by the hand of some later author 



ANTIQUITY OF OUR ETHICAL IDEALS 7 

or editor, they are believed to have received their 
final shaping as they are known to us. Whether 
the earlier or some later leader of the Israelites 
formulated them, it is not the writer's purpose to 
discuss; but to show that the ethical precepts of 
later times, as well as all so-called divinely re- 
vealed moral laws, have not been peculiar to any 
period or nation, but that their growth and de- 
velopment have been coextensive with the evolu- 
tion of nations, and that they may be traced in all 
the civilizations of the past. 

It is now known that a high degree of civiliza- 
tion existed in Mesopotamia and along the Nile 
some thousands of years before the alleged time 
of Moses, and even before the rise of the Hebrew 
nation. An examination of the religious cere- 
monies and teachings of the Egyptians reveals 
the fact that they had formulated their moral pre- 
cepts in language closely akin to that of the 
Hebrew decalogue. 

The most valuable of all the works of the re- 
mote past, for the light which it throws upon their 
religious conceptions and ideals, is that which was 



^w^. -^a,^s->>-,r-."E-.»,.g. JtsatrtygaaMM-ftv***.-^ 



8 ANTIQUITY OF OUR ETHICAL IDEALS 

called the Per-em-hru by the people of ancient 
Egypt, and which is better known to us as the 
Book of the Dead. It was the book of the going 
forth from the darkness into light, and it is a 
series of books or chapters containing prayers, 
exorcisms, and litanies for the guidance of the 
spirit or ghost of the departed in its long journey 
through the nether world. It was written at dif- 
ferent periods, and some parts of it are known 
to be very ancient. The sixty-fourth chapter 
states that it was found in the reign of King 
Menkaura, which is placed by Dr. Petrie at 
3845-3784 B. C. Some of these chapters 
were to be memorized by the living, and 
whispered in the ears of the dead, or to be written 
and placed in his burial case or tomb. This 
would enable the deceased to repulse the attacks 
of the demons and monsters which peopled the 
regions through which the spirit must pass on its 
way to the tribunal of the gods. No two copies 
of the Book of the Dead, as it has come down to 
us, are alike. The longest is known as the Turin 
Papyrus, and it contains one hundred and sixty- 



ANTIQUITY OF OUR ETHICAL IDEALS 9 

five chapters. It is probable that a thousand 
papyri containing a more or less complete copy 
of this work have been discovered, and are now 
preserved in various museums. Previous to the 
eighteenth dynasty (1587-1562 B. C.) it was in- 
scribed usually upon coffins and walls of tombs, 
but afterwards, written on papyrus or linen or 
leather, it was placed in the burial case, or be- 
side it. 

Copies of the seventeenth chapter have been 
found, which date from the eleventh dynasty 
(3005-2778 B. C). In this chapter it is said 
that " those hated by the gods are they whose evil 
doings are reckoned " ; and that " evil is returned 
to the guilty, and good is done to the one bearing 
it in himself." The next chapter says that he 
lives beloved by the gods and - shall live forever " 
upon whose forehead father Tmu sets his fine 
crown of " truth-speaking." The idea of a tri- 
bunal in heaven before which men must appear 
for trial for evil done on earth is found in 
Egyptian inscriptions which were made thirty- 
five hundred years B. C. ; and even five cen- 



— - 



10 ANTIQUITY OF OUR ETHICAL IDEALS 

turies earlier than that the Egyptians had for- 
mulated a moral code in conformity to which 
a man must live in order to obtain an eternal 
hereafter. The spirit of the deceased was sup- 
posed to be taken into the bark of the sun god 
about the period of the winter solstice and 
borne along the sacred Nile towards the 
Judgment Hall of the gods, the Hall of Truths, 
where Osiris sat with his forty-two assist- 
ants, each of whom passed judgment on some 
special sin if the deceased during his lifetime had 
committed it. The chapter which describes the 
ceremonies of this Hall of Osiris is numbered 
one hundred and twenty-five; it is the most in- 
teresting and famous one in the Per-em-hru. One 
of the oldest copies of it is that in the British 
Museum, which is known as the papyrus of the 
scribe Nebseni. It comes from ancient Mem- 
phis, and is assigned to the beginning of the eight- 
eenth dynasty, around 1587 B. C. This chapter 
appears to have been the most popular one for 
use in the tombs and on the monuments at this 
period. From it may be learned that, centuries 



ANTIQUITY OF OUR ETHICAL IDEALS II 

before it had been written upon the tables of stone 
at Sinai: 

Thou shall not kill; 

Thou shalt not commit adultery; 

Thou shalt not steal; 

Thou shalt not bear false witness against thy 
neighbor ; 

Thou shalt not take the name of the Lord thy God 
in vain; 

the. Egyptian had been taught that if he hoped 
for future happiness he must be able to declare 
truthfully in the Hall of Osiris: 

I have not killed; 

I have not committed adultery; 

I have not stolen; 

I have not told lies; 

I have not cursed God; 

I have not acted deceitfully; 

I have not tampered with the weight of the balance: 

I have not done evil; 

I am pure, pure, pure. 

" Thou shalt not revile the gods, nor curse the 
ruler of thy people," it is written in Exodus xxii. 



12 ANTIQUITY OF OUR ETHICAL IDEALS 

28. " I have never cursed the king ; I have not 
blasphemed a god," declared the Egyptian before 
the judge. " I have not worked the spell [witch- 
craft] which causes pining away," was the cry 
of the suppliant in the Hall of the Two Truths; 
and this was the command to the Hebrew: 
" Thou shalt not suffer a witch to live." 

The lake of fire was located behind the judges, 
upon the plates of the papyrus, and each corner 
of it was guarded by a dog-headed ape. Inas- 
much as evil was believed by the Egyptians to 
originate and dwell in the heart, the veracity of 
him who affirmed his innocence before the august 
tribunal was tested by the ceremonial weighing 
of his heart in the balance. The image of Truth 
was placed in the opposite scale of the balance. 
Horus watched from one side, Anubis from the 
other, Thoth recorded the result, and Osiris 
passed sentence. If the weighing of the heart 
confirmed the declarations of the soul of the de- 
ceased, then the various parts which in Egyptian 
philosophy made up the composite man, and had 
been separated by death, were united again for an 



ANTIQUITY OF OUR ETHICAL IDEALS 1 3 

eternity of joy; if the test failed, woe unto him, 
for the purifying fires awaited him, or it might be 
the second death and annihilation. 

An early papyrus copy of the Per-em-hru is in- 
scribed in honor of a steward of the herds of 
Amen, and " his wife who loves him, the lady who 
makes all his delight." A stele found in the 
tomb of Paheri, a public officer and scribe in the 
latter part of the seventeenth dynasty, mentions 
the Judgment Hall of Osiris, and is inscribed: 
" I did not receive bribes; I did not speak to de- 
ceive another; I did not alter a message while 
delivering it." If we accept with some reserva- 
tion the affirmations in these inscriptions, it does 
not make less prominent the fact that they are 
really the actual statements of their ethical stand- 
ards. Mr. Myers says: "The victory of good 
over evil, of right over wrong, whether in speech 
or action, is the substance of nine-tenths of the 
Egyptian texts which have come down to us from 
the earliest times, outside of those devoted to his- 
torical statements." x 

1 " Oldest Books in the World," Isaac Myer, 32. 



14 ANTIQUITY OF OUR ETHICAL IDEALS 

An inscription on the stele of Iritson of the 
eleventh dynasty (2832-2786 B. C.) refers to the 
" weighing done for the reckoning of accounts," 
and the " forms of issuing forth and coming in," 
which clearly indicate a knowledge at that early 
date of the ceremonies in the Judgment Hall. It 
also asserts that he knows the " mystery of the 
divine word [the Per-em-hru] and the ordinances 
of the religious feasts and their rites, and has never 
strayed from them." Iritson and Hapu, his wife, 
are portrayed twice on this tablet. They are sit- 
ting together on one sofa, the lady with her arm 
lovingly around the neck of her husband. Hapu 
is spoken of as his pious wife who loves him. 

The stele of Prince Antep, of the same period, 
says: " He did not make any distinction between 
a stranger and those known to him. He was the 
father of the weak, the support of him who had no 
mother. Feared by the evildoer, he protected the 
poor. He was the deliverer of him whom a more 
powerful one deprived of his property. He was 
husband of the widow, the refuge of the or- 
phan." 



ANTIQUITY OF OUR ETHICAL IDEALS 1 5 

In the next dynasty (2778-2565 B. C.) Seren- 
put, an officer of King Usertesen L, speaks of his 
dear daughters and his wife as " the beloved of 
the seat of his heart." The stele of Akhmin, now 
at Ghizeh, belonging to the same period, says he 
has done what was agreeable to men and the gods ; 
he has given bread to the hungry and clothes to 
those who were naked. Another stele at Ghizeh 
of the same date says: "I have given bread to 
the hungry, clothing to those who were naked, and 
conducted myself in the way of devotion." A 
tablet of an overseer under King Ai (1344-1333 
B. C), says: " I have given bread to the hungry; 
I have satisfied the indigent; my mouth hath 
not spoken insolently against my superiors." One 
which was set up long before, in the fourth dy- 
nasty (3845-3784 B. C), says of Urchuu: " He 
has practiced righteousness; he has been benevo- 
lent to men ; he never did evil to anyone ; he never 
caused death to anyone." 

An inscription at El-Kab, on the tomb of Baba, 
says: "I loved my father; I honored my 
mother; my brothers and my sisters loved me." 



1 6 ANTIQUITY OF OUR ETHICAL IDEALS 

The date of it is about 1587 B. C. It says of 
Baba, that he distributed corn to the city each 
year of the famine, that he went out of the door 
of his house with a benevolent heart and stood 
there with a refreshing hand. The number of 
children, great and small, for whom he provided 
beds and refreshments is enumerated, and the 
substance consumed is itemized. It was many 
centuries afterward that Another One wrote: 
" Now abideth faith, hope, charity, these three ; 
but the greatest of these is charity." 

It was reverently written of his wife, in the 
tomb of the courtly Ti, more than five thousand 
years ago, that she was " sweet as a palm tree in 
her love." One of the precepts in a book of later 
times, says: "Ill-use not thy wife; she has 
transgressed, let her depart with her property." 
An epitaph of the Hyksos period, supposed to be 
2098-1587 B. C, says; " I loved my father; I 
honored my mother; my brothers and my sisters 
loved me." 

In an inscription fifteen centuries earlier the 
subject of it implores his descendants to bear 



ANTIQUITY OF OUR ETHICAL IDEALS 1 7 

witness that he had " lived in peace and 
wrought righteousness, loving his father, loving 
his mother, giving way to his companions; the joy 
of his brothers, the beloved of his servants; no 
accuser of slanderers; a teller of the truth which 
is dear to God." With reference to the expres- 
sion, " loving his father, reverencing his mother, 
and being beloved by his brethren," Mr. Simcox 
says that it " represented when first adopted the 
maturest conviction of Egyptian philosophers as 
to the sentiments necessary for the felicitous 
working of the family relationships " ; and it is 
the opinion of the same author that the wife, at 
the beginning and the close of Egyptian history, 
" occupied a position of substantial equality in re- 
lation to her husband, for which it would be as 
hard to find a parallel in modern as in ancient 
history." 2 

The treaty of Rameses II. with the Khita said 
in relation to the fugitive: " His house, his wife, 
his children shall not be destroyed; his mother 
shall not be slain." In the maxims of the scribe 
2 " Primitive Civilizations," E. J. Simcox, i. 199 et seq. 



1 8 ANTIQUITY OF OUR ETHICAL IDEALS 

Ani the husband is admonished as to his conduct 
towards his wife: " Open thy arms for her, call 
her to thy arms, show her thy love." The papy- 
rus of Ani was found in the tomb of a Christian 
monk, and it bears evidence of having been writ- 
ten in the sixth or seventh century B. C. ; but this 
papyrus was only a copy, and the original goes 
back ten centuries farther. It was first translated 
in 1870. It is a book of counsel, and treats of 
justice, propriety, conduct, and life. One of the 
sayings of the scribe is: " If one seeks thy views, 
turn to the divine books." For then, as now, the 
sacred writings voiced the wisdom that mortals 
conceded to the superior powers. " If one has 
lost a good opportunity," says another maxim, 
" he should make haste to seize another." We 
cull a few more from the same source: 

If thou restrain thy tongue thou art good. 

Fatten not thyself in the house in which they drink 
beer. 

Discipline in a house is its life. 

Do not remain seated when another is standing if 
he is older than thou. 



ANTIQUITY OF OUR ETHICAL IDEALS 1 9 

One does not receive good things when one says 
evil things. 

Walk each day in the right way; thou wilt then 
reach the dwelling. 

If thou art good thou wilt be respected. 

Do not do what she [thy mother] would reprove in 
thee, for fear that, if she raise her hands toward God, 
he will hear her prayers [against thee] .3 

If King Solomon wrote: " Seest thou a man 
hasty in his words? there is more hope of a fool 
than of him "; and a thousand years later James 
admonished his brethren to be " slow to speak and 
slow to wrath " ; some seven centuries before 
Solomon reigned, the wise Ani had written, and 
it has been preserved for us: "Guard thyself 
from sinning by words, that they may not wound ; 
the malicious pertness which never ceases in the 
breast of a man is a thing to be condemned. Hold 
thyself from a man who has so failed, do not 
allow him to become thy companion." And 
some seventeen centuries before the wise Ani had 
given expression to this judicious counsel, another 

3 "Oldest Books in the World," Isaac Myer, 115 et seq. 



20 ANTIQUITY OF OUR ETHICAL IDEALS 

old patriarch of the Egyptians said: " If thou 
hast to do with a disputant when he is hot, act 
as one who cannot be moved. Thou [then] hast 
the advantage over him, if only in keeping silent 
when he is using evil speech " ; or as another has 
rendered it: 

"Keep cool, you will win in the end, 
Contradicted, just govern your tongue." 

The same moralist, Ptah-hotep, said if a son re- 
jects all counsel and " his mouth moves in wicked 
speech, strike him consequently on the mouth." 
And this sentiment as preserved in the wisdom 
of the Hebrews reads: " A fool's lips enter into 
contention, and his mouth calleth for strokes." 

Ani said : " Keep an affectionate remembrance 
of thy father and mother, who repose in the tomb, 
to the end that thy son may act in the same way 
towards thee ; " but Absalom long afterwards 
reared up for himself a pillar in the king's dale, 
" For, he said, I have no son to keep my name in 
remembrance." 

One of the proverbs of the Hebrews reads: 



ANTIQUITY OF OUR ETHICAL IDEALS 21 

" He that hateth covetousness shall prolong his 
days "; but, as one of the sayings of Ani appears 
in English garb, it is written: "Fill not thy 
heart with the property of another." Ani ad- 
monished men to be on guard against the snares 
of wives who write letters to them in the ab- 
sence of their husbands; and the saying of the 
preacher long afterwards has been translated: 
" I find more bitter than death the woman whose 
heart is snares and nets, and her hands as bands; 
whoso pleaseth God shall escape from her, but 
the sinner shall be taken by her." If " thou shalt 
not bear false witness " was engraved on the tables 
of stone, it had first been inscribed on the papy- 
rus of Ani: " When one is falsely accused, God 
comes later and makes the truth known, and 
death removes the liar." The third section of the 
code of laws established by King Hammurabi 
(2250 B. C.) makes death the penalty for giving 
false testimony in a case where life is depending 
upon it. 

It is now a little more than half a century since 
the papyrus known as the Prisse, from the name of 



22 ANTIQUITY OF OUR ETHICAL IDEALS 

its owner, was first published, and given to the 
Bibliotheque of Paris. It contained the little 
book of Ptah-hotep and a few pages written by 
Kaquemna. Both were written in poetical form, 
and were treatises on morality. The date of the 
Prisse papyrus is placed around 2778-2565 B. C, 
but it is expressly stated in it that it is a copy cf 
an older writing. The author of the first few 
pages was Kaquemna, and he says that it was com- 
posed in the reign of Seneferu, a name which sig- 
nifies " he who makes good." Dr. Petrie places 
the period of this reign at 3998-3969 B. C. 
Ptah-hotep, the writer of the remaining pages of 
the papyrus, lived in the time of King Assa, some 
four centuries later. Both the authors were 
prominent public officials. The latter work was 
written, when the author was advanced in years, 
as a manual of instruction for his son, and others 
in the future. Distinguished scholars have often 
expressed their admiration for the high character 
of the teachings of these ancient writings. Their 
avowed object was to promote righteousness. 
Self-restraint, propriety, chastity, integrity, and 



ANTIQUITY OF OUR ETHICAL IDEALS 23 

benevolence are put forward as essentials to pros- 
perity and happiness. Mr. Myer says that they 
testify to " the existence of a code of noble, ex- 
alted, and refined ethics " ; and M. Chabas, that 
" not any of the Christian virtues are forgotten 
in them." Ptah-hotep especially strives to im- 
press upon his son that by obedience to moral 
precepts his body will be in health and he will 
have years of life without failure,- and to this he 
attributes his own long life of one hundred and 
ten years. He declares that the children of those 
who seize the property of others " become objects 
of curses, scorn, and hatred." Even that which 
is according to law, if unjust, should be unveiled 
and exposed. He sounds a warning against the 
repetition of the extravagant language which 
another uses: " Do not listen to it; it is a thing 
which has escaped from a heated soul." Words 
which multiply flatteries, raise pride, and produce 
vanity must not prevail ; " do perfect things which 
posterity will remember," or, as it has been ren- 
dered by Mr. Rawnsley: 4 

4 " Notes for the Nile," H. D. Rawnsley, 303. 



24 ANTIQUITY OF OUR ETHICAL IDEALS 

" Do what is good and just, 
Perfect, complete ; 
Deeds that when thou art dust, 
Still shall be sweet." 

The sentiment is echoed by sages and philoso- 
phers down along the ages. The greatest of the 
Hebrew prophets said nearly three millenniums 
afterwards : " Cease to do evil ; learn to do 
well." Two centuries later Gautama summed 
up the religion of the Buddhas: 

" To cease from sin 
To get virtue, 
To cleanse the heart"; 

and six hundred years before Gautama spoke, a 
Chinese poet wrote: 

" It [heaven] round about us moves, 
Inspecting all we do, 
And daily disapproves 
What is not just and true." 

It was more than five thousand years after the 
verses of Ptah-hotep had been written that James 
Shirley, an English poet, wrote in a funeral song: 



ANTIQUITY OF OUR ETHICAL IDEALS 25 

" Only the actions of the just 
Smell sweet, and blossom in the dust." 

On a stele of Beka, a steward of the granary in 
the nineteenth dynasty, it was affirmed that his 
hope of future living was based on the truthful- 
ness of his life. The " Song of the Harper " of 
the same period, said: " Give bread to him 
whose field is barren, thy name will be glorious 
in posterity evermore; good for thee will have 
been an honest life when thou shalt start for the 
land one goeth to return not thence." It was 
written in the tomb of Ameny at Beni Hasan : 
" Not a daughter of a poor man did I wrong, not 
a widow did I oppress . . . there was not a 
hungry man in my time." 

" Honor thy father and thy mother that thy 
days may be long in the land," reads the Hebrew 
decalogue; and Ptah-hotep said: 

" The son, who doth accept 
The instruction of his father, will grow old, 
Long in the land his days, on that account." 

It was said in an inscription on a libation vase 



26 ANTIQUITY OF OUR ETHICAL IDEALS 

in the museum of the Louvre that a son faithful 
to the memory of his father shall not be repulsed 
by Osiris on the day of the great festival of the 
gods ; and it was taught in the Book of the Dead 
that if it could be said of one that "he is a son 
who loves his father," this would be a passport 
for his soul on the day of his entrance into the 
Amend. 

" Thou shalt not make unto thee any graven 
image," commanded Jahveh through the Hebrew 
law-giver, but before the Exodus, in his hymn to 
the Nile, Ennana wrote: 

" Not on marble is he scrolled, 
Him our eyes cannot behold, 
Yea, his dwelling is unknown, 
Never yet in painted shrine, 
Have we found his form divine." 

The Israelites reckoned time by moons and 
nights, and divided the week into seven days, 
the seventh day being a holy day, and begin- 
ning at sunset of the sixth and ending at sun- 
set of the seventh. It is now known, from an 



ANTIQUITY OF OUR ETHICAL IDEALS 27 

Egyptian papyrus of the fourteenth century 
B. C, that before the time assigned for the de- 
parture of the Hebrews from Egypt the Egyp- 
tians had a seven-day period, and the sixth- 
seventh day — that is, from sunset of the sixth 
to sunset of the seventh — was sacred to the 
moon. Mr. C. W. Goodwin has translated the 
passage in the papyrus which relates to it, as fol- 
lows: 

" O Ra ! adored in Aptu [Thebes] : 

High-crowned in the house of the obelisk [Heliopolis] : 

King [Ani], Lord of the New-Moon festival: 

To whom the sixth and seventh days are sacred." 

The poem from which this is taken is a hymn to 
Amen-Ra, and the composition is of much earlier 
date than the papyrus, which only purports to be 
a copy. The tablets of Tell el Amarna have 
made known the close relationship at this period 
of Egypt with Assyria, where the Chaldean as- 
tronomers had given, long before, the names of 
the known planets to the seven days of their 
week. These planetary names of the days were 



28 ANTIQUITY OF OUR ETHICAL IDEALS 

afterwards introduced into Egypt, but not till 
fifteen hundred and fifty years after the copy of 
the hymn to Amen-Ra which is now extant had 
been made. The Romans copied them from the 
Egyptians in the fourth century. Each hour of 
the seven days among the Chaldeans had been 
sacred to some one of the seven planets. This is 
learned from a tablet of the time of the reign of 
Sargon I., about 3800 B. C. The hours conse- 
crated to each planet were arranged in the order 
of the magnitude of the planet's orbit, and the day 
itself was named from the planet to which the 
first hour was sacred. 

There are some traces in the Chaldean creation 
legends of the seventh day as a holy day on which 
business was suspended. " Though it is quite 
possible," Mr. A. B. Ellis says, " that the Israelites 
may have invented a seven-day week and a weekly 
Sabbath spontaneously, yet the evidence of the 
books of the Old Testament goes to show that 
they borrowed both these institutions from the 
Babylonian-Assyrians during the Captivity." It 
is now quite generally accepted as a fact that they 



ANTIQUITY OF OUR ETHICAL IDEALS 29 

came from this source to the Israelites, but it is 
not at all clear at what period of their national 
existence the observance of the weekly Sabbath 
was established. The Hebrew sacred books 
record two traditions of its origin. It is written 
in Exodus that Jahveh " blessed the Sabbath and 
hallowed it," because of the six days of creation 
and the seventh day of rest which followed; 
while in Deuteronomy the reason given for ap- 
pointing the seventh day as a Sabbath was to make 
it a memorial of the fact that " his mighty hand 
and outstretched arm " had brought them safely 
out from the land of Egypt. If Abraham was a 
worshiper in the temple of the moon god Sin at 
Ur before he left Chaldea, as he may have been, 
then he was undoubtedly familiar with their 
weekly Sabbath, and may have carried a knowl- 
edge of it to the Hebrews ; yet little or no mention 
of it is made in the earlier written ethical and his- 
torical books. Its observance was apparently neg- 
lected by Joshua at the siege of Jericho, by 
David in his pursuit of the Amalekites, and by 
Solomon in his fourteen days' feast at the dedi- 



30 ANTIQUITY OF OUR ETHICAL IDEALS 

cation of the temple, though in the books written 
or perfected after the Captivity its rigid enforce- 
ment is insisted upon to such an extent that they 
submit to be massacred rather than to risk dis- 
obedience to a law which forbid them from going 
out from their own domiciles on the seventh day. 
The discovery by George Smith in 1869 of 
what is known as a Babylonian Saints' Calendar 
has thrown light on the origin of the weekly Sab- 
bath. Its age is not definitely known, but it is 
known to have been in existence prior to the 
seventeenth century B. C, and from its Ac- 
cadian forms and expressions it is believed to be- 
long to very early times. In this calendar the 
seventh, fourteenth, nineteenth, twenty-first, 
and twenty-eighth days of the months are set 
down as holy days. On these days, it is said, the 
king puts not on his white robe, nor rides in his 
chariot; he takes no medicine for the sickness of 
the body; no laws are made; the garments of 
the body are changed not; the flesh of birds and 
the cooking of fruit are forbidden; but the king 
sacrifices in the high places to the gods which he 



ANTIQUITY OF OUR ETHICAL IDEALS 3 1 

worships. That this worship of the moon god 
led to the division of the moon month into weekly 
periods corresponding to what is now commonly 
called changes in the moon, and was the origin of 
the seventh day Sabbath with the Babylonians, 
and its descent from them to the Hebrews is 
hardly to be longer questioned. 

It is interesting to note that in this ancient 
calendar of the Assyrians may be found the nu- 
cleus of all the laws, written and unwritten, civil 
and moral, as well as the source of many of the 
traditions, customs, and beliefs of later ages and 
modern times, in relation to the observance of the 
Sabbath. 

The law of the Israelites said later: " Ye shall 
kindle no fire throughout your habitations upon 
the Sabbath day." The Jews still later objected 
to the healing of the sick by Jesus upon that day. 
The Assyrian prohibition of medicine on Sunday 
survived in the belief, in the Middle Ages, that 
medical treatment must not be administered in 
certain phases of the moon. In the construction 
of laws which have been made in recent years in 



32 ANTIQUITY OF OUR ETHICAL IDEALS 

New York the legality of the sale of food on Sun- 
day was made contingent upon its being cooked or 
uncooked. Legal processes are not served on Sun- 
day, and the legality of papers executed on that 
day is questioned; barber shops and bathing es- 
tablishments are closed, and many statutes still 
regulate the running of the king's chariot on the 
Sabbath as in the time when the Babylonian 
Saints' Calendar was made. 

Professor Morris Jastrow thinks the incanta- 
tion texts may be regarded as the oldest fixed 
ritual of the Babylonian-Assyrian religion, and he 
finds " indications in the language which warrant 
us in not passing below two thousand years B. C. 
as the period when many of them received their 
present form." While some of the beliefs as- 
sociated with them are of the most primitive 
character, yet the ethical ideas introduced into 
them give a glimpse of the moral standards of the 
people at the time. In the ceremonies of the 
exorcists to remove the ban from him who was 
accursed, the possible sins and transgressions for 
which he may be suffering the penalties are enu- 



ANTIQUITY OF OUR ETHICAL IDEALS 33 

merated interrogatively, and they remind us of the 
negative declarations in the Hall of Osiris: 

Has he despised father or mother? 

Has he given too little? 

Has he withheld too much? 

Has he used false weights? 

Has he fixed a false boundary? 

Has he possessed himself of his neighbor's house, 

Has he approached his neighbor's wife, 

Has he shed the blood of his neighbor? 

Was he frank in speaking, 

But false in heart, 

Was it yes with his mouth, 

But no in his heart? 5 

The last lines recall the sentiment which 
Homer put into the mouth of Achilles at least a 
thousand years later: " Hateful to me as the gates 
of hell is he that hideth one thing in his heart and 
uttereth another." A few centuries later Theog- 
nis advised his friend Cyrnus that he was better as 
a foe than a comrade, who, with " one tongue, 
had yet his mind at variance." 

5 " Religion of Babylonia and Assyria," Morris Jas- 
trow, 257, 291. 



34 ANTIQUITY OF OUR ETHICAL IDEALS 

The Assyrians believed that parents after their 
death looked out for and protected their living 
children if generous offerings were made at their 
tombs, or they persecuted those who neglected 
their filial duties. Such ideas may have been 
primarily associated with belief in ancestral dei- 
ties. One of the above quoted questions from the 
magical texts reveals the fact that, in the minds 
of the people of the valley of the Euphrates, as 
along the Nile and in Judea, parental devotion 
was of great importance, and contributed to the 
enjoyment of life, prosperity, and longevity. 

A tablet from the library of Ashurbanipal con- 
tains an old Accadian law forbidding a man to 
deny his father and mother. Another says that 
a son who denies his father and mother shall have 
his hair cut off, and be imprisoned. The in- 
scription of Hammurabi, who reigned about 2250 
B. C, says that he set up the statue of his father 
at the four quarters of the heaven, and that, when 
he had built his great canal and set up the tower 
of Sinmuballit, he named it in honor of his 
father. A statue of Gudea, which was set up in 



ANTIQUITY OF OUR ETHICAL IDEALS 35 

the temple of the god Ningirsu still earlier, is in- 
scribed, " No son has ill-treated his mother." 
The Hebrew poet sang: "The Lord is my 

shepherd, I shall not want;" but it is written 

i 
on an Egyptian tablet of much earlier date: 

" Numerous are the things which the king of 
gods giveth to him who knoweth him." A frag- 
ment of an Accadian penitential psalm de- 
clares that " he who honors not his goddess will 
waste away; like to a star in heaven his splendor 
will pale; he will vanish like the waters of the 
night." A hymn to the moon god, which is be- 
lieved to have been written in the ancient city of 
Ur, speaks of the god as a father " long suffering 
and full of forgiveness." Another tablet says: 
" The fear of God begets mercy, and prayer dis- 
solves sin." 

Loyalty to their own district or tribal god was 
the test of patriotism and piety among ancient 
peoples. "Ye shall not go after other gods, of 
the gods of the people which are round about 
you," was the law for the followers of Jahveh. 
Amen-Ra was' worshiped at Thebes, and appears 



36 ANTIQUITY OF OUR ETHICAL IDEALS 

in the hymns as " the lord of the gods " and 
" maker of existences." Ptah was " the father 
of the gods " at Memphis; Knoph was " the soul 
of the universe " in Nubia; Osiris at first reigned 
at Abydos only, Thoth at Hermopolis, and Turn 
at Heliopolis. Ea was " lord of the wave " and 
" king of the deep " in Eridhu of ancient Chaldea. 
Mul-lil was the god of Nippur, and Bel-Marduk 
chiefest of gods at great Babylon. Nebo reigned 
in Borsippa, and Assur gave his name to his king- 
dom and its capital city. 

Unity of belief has been the ideal of the ages. 
It is still the goal of many minds. How often in 
the past men have believed themselves called from 
on high to kill or persecute those who served other 
gods! 

It is doubtful if, even at the beginning of 
the twentieth century, any of the civilized coun- 
tries of the world are entirely reconciled to the 
idea of religious liberty. It is accepted with a 
reservation, and that reservation too often means 
a proviso that some particular features of their 
personal creed shall be made compulsory. True, 



ANTIQUITY OF OUR ETHICAL IDEALS 37 

public sentiment no longer openly approves the 
use of physical force to prevent nonconformity, 
but favoritism, ostracism, and boycott are as avail- 
able now as ever in history. Neither must we 
forget that some of the oldest records of the past 
furnish evidence of enlightened religious liberty 
that compares not unfavorably with the better 
sentiments of modern times. 

One of the old Babylonian tablets which Pro- 
fessor Jastrow says may have belonged to the crea- 
tion series exalts Marduk, " who showed mercy 
towards the captured gods," and spared the lives 
of the associates of the monster Tiamat. The 
stele of Beka in the nineteenth dynasty declared, 
" I have not done harm to men who have honored 
their gods." If we are shocked that the cul- 
tured King Ashurbanipal, who gathered and pre- 
served all the known literature of the world in 
his time, recorded in his own annals boastingly 
that he " pulled out the tongues " and " flayed off 
the skin " of noncomformists in Arbela, we may 
not cease to remember also that it was Charles 
the Fifth, defender of the faith, master of Ger- 



38 ANTIQUITY OF OUR ETHICAL IDEALS 

man, Spanish, Italian, French, and Flemish, who 
introduced the Inquisition, and under whose edicts 
the people of the Netherlands were hanged, 
burned, and buried alive for heresy; nor may we 
forget that in the century later it was the same 
New Englanders who founded universities that 
tied to the tails of their ox-carts, cropped the ears 
of, and hanged dissenters. 

One hears echoed in the voices of the present 
the cry that the hope of humanity lies in the ex- 
tension and development of altruistic ideals. We 
may discern something of this spirit in the glean- 
ings from the past. Only the merest fragments 
of the literature of the Carthaginians were saved 
when the Romans destroyed their libraries; but 
one of their sayings which has been preserved de- 
fines an upright man as one of whom people said 
that he did everything that a just man ought to 
do. An inscription of Gudea describes him as " a 
righteous man who loves his town, fulfilling 
what is becoming for him to do." The stele of 
Neb-auab, now in the Louvre, whose date has 
not been fixed, says, " I have been loved by my 



ANTIQUITY OF OUR ETHICAL IDEALS 39 

fellow countrymen." It is told of Zoroaster 
(and we may remember that he was a youth in 
the reign of Ashurbanipal), that, inquiring once 
in open assembly what was most favorable for the 
soul, he was told, " To nourish the poor, give 
fodder to cattle, bring firewood to the fire, pour 
hom-juice into water, and worship many demons." 
He rejected the last, and accepted the others as 
being worthy of a righteous man. Confucius, 
born a few years later than Zoroaster, lays down, 
as the first principles, faithfulness and sincerity; 
and he exhorted his followers not to do to others 
as they would not wish others to do to them- 
selves. " The firm, the enduring, the simple, and 
the modest," says he, " are near to virtue " ; and 
" the man, who in view of gain thinks of right- 
eousness; who in the view of danger is prepared 
to give up life; and who does not forget an old 
agreement, however far back it extends; such a 
man may be reckoned a complete man." Buddha, 
born half a century before Confucius, held that 
the only ideal of life worth striving after was that 
of a perfect life here and now. He said the ideal 



40 ANTIQUITY OF OUR ETHICAL IDEALS 

teacher should " keep nothing secret and hold 
nothing back." 

" Yew," said the master, Confucius, " shall I 
teach you what knowledge is? When you know 
a thing, to hold that you know it; and when you 
do not know a thing, to allow that you do not 
know it; this is knowledge." Buddha taught 
that it was impossible to incite men to a hopeful 
struggle after the perfect life here so long as they 
were "still hampered and all their virtue "tar- 
nished by a foolish craving " for an eternal life 
hereafter. Such questions as, " What shall I 
be doing during the ages of the future? " he said 
were worse than unprofitable, and refused to dis- 
cuss them. He said the desire to discuss them 
was a weakness, and the answers given were 
usually delusions. One of the hymns to him says : 

" Persecutions without end, 
Revilings and many prisons, 
Death and murder, 

These hast thou suffered with love and patience 
[To secure the happiness of mankind], 
Forgiving thine executioners." 



ANTIQUITY OF OUR ETHICAL IDEALS 41 

Confucius told his disciples that the design of 
all the three hundred pieces in the sacred Shi King 
might be embraced in one sentence : " Have no 
depraved thoughts." 

" To be pure, temperate, and persevering in 
good deeds; these are excellencies," said the 
Buddha. Six centuries later in another land a 
Voice was heard saying: " Blessed are the pure 
in heart, for they shall see God." 

In contrasting the ethical conceptions of older 
civilizations with our own, one can but be im- 
pressed with the justness of the summary conclu- 
sion of the old Greek philosopher, Aristotle, who, 
living midway between them and us, seemed to 
divine the future, as well as the past, when he 
said : " In all times men have praised honesty, 
moral purity, beneficence; in all times they have 
protested against murder, adultery, perjury, and 
all kinds of vice. No one will dare maintain that 
it is better to do injustice than to bear it." 

But, after all, what intangible entities are 
human ideals? Change the perspective, the goal 
forbidden becomes the righteous end, and " thou 



42 ANTIQUITY OF OUR ETHICAL IDEALS 

shalt not " is transformed into a self-conscious, 
strenuous, aggressive " thou shalt." In his im- 
mortal epic Homer has pictured the divided gods, 
arrayed against each other and actively assisting 
the contending forces at the siege of Troy. So 
Christian armies meet on battlefields, while from 
the friends of each countless petitions, fervent 
as the prayer of Rameses at Kadesh, go up to God 
for the destruction of the enemy. With absorb- 
ing interest and incredulous wonder we read the 
story of the childlike simplicity of the crude be- 
lief of the ancient Greeks, lacking the insight to 
perceive that our own conceptions are merely the 
reflection of theirs. 



SOME VARIANTS OF THE 
TALE OF THE KINGS 



SOME VARIANTS OF THE TALE 
OF THE KINGS 

It is well known that there is much similarity 
between many of the semi-historical incidents and 
legendary tales of heroes and leaders of peoples 
who have been widely separated geographically 
and in period of time. How can this fact be 
most satisfactorily explained? This question has 
been the subject of much earnest and prolonged 
discussion by those interested in the scientific 
study of the story of the past. Sometimes these 
kindred tales are easily traced ; roving adventurers 
may have carried them ; community of origin may 
explain them ; they may have been the outcome of 
commercial relations or warlike encounters. The 
spontaneous generation of similar ideas and im- 
pressions under like conditions among different 
races and nations at parallel levels of culture and 
development has been assumed by distinguished 
45 



46 VARIANTS OF THE TALE OF THE KINGS 

investigators; and this theory seems to have been 
accepted as a working hypothesis by many lead- 
ing scholars. 

It is the aim of this paper to indicate some 
points of contact and resemblance in the stories 
of a few of the interesting personalities, whether 
real or semi-mythical, who have been prominent 
in the literary annals of historic, or the traditions 
of prehistoric, times. 

One of the sweetest and most pathetic tales 
in all ancient history is that of the infant Moses. 
It is familiar in every household. According to 
the Biblical record the babe was concealed until 
it was three months old; its mother then placed 
it in an ark of bulrushes, which was daubed with 
slime and pitch, and placed among the flags by 
the river's brink; there, when the daughter of 
Pharaoh came down to the river to bathe, the 
child was found, and given over to one of the 
Hebrew women to care for. 

Legend says that the mother went away weep- 
ing and wailing, while Miriam, the five-year-old 
sister of the babe, followed the little ark as it 



VARIANTS OF THE TALE OF THE KINGS 47 

floated on the wash of the river in and out among 
the reeds. 

The pedestal of the statue of King Sargon I. 
of Babylon contains a sketch of his early life. 
Assyriologists have been able to fix with more 
certainty the period of his reign than they have 
many other events of like importance in antiquity. 
It is placed at 3800 B. C. As George Smith 
interpreted the inscription on the pedestal, the 
child was born in a grove; its mother put it in a 
cradle of wicker and launched it on the river. 
Fox Talbot has rendered it: " In a secret place 
she brought me forth; she placed me in an ark 
of bulrushes; with bitumen my door she closed 
up; she threw me into the river, which did not 
enter the ark to me; to the dwelling of Akki, the 
water-carrier, it brought me; Akki, the water- 
carrier, in his goodness of heart lifted me up from 
the river; Akki, the water-carrier, brought me up 
as his own son." x 

Professor Tylor says of this inscription : " The 
text no doubt reproduces the ancient legend re- 
1 " Records of the Past," vol. v. p. 3. 



48 VARIANTS OF THE TALE OF THE KINGS 

specting the birth and parentage of Sargon, but 
the story of the predestined king, who is exposed 
in his youth and brought up in obscurity by 
humble foster parents, has been told in too many 
times and places for it to be easy to accept even 
the earliest version of it as historical." Professor 
Steinthal says: " The birth of a hero of a legend 
is always the last circumstance to be invented 
concerning him, when his life and character are 
already well settled; just as an author writes his 
preface only after completion of his book." 

William Morris, the English poet, has written 
beautifully the tale of " The Man Born to be 
King," in which it' was foretold to a great king, 

" Who ruled wide lands nor lacked for gold," 

that he who should reign after him would be low- 
born and poor. Long afterwards when the wise 
seer's message had been forgotten, and the king 
chanced to pass the night in a woodman's hut in 
the forest while on a hunting expedition, it was 
again impressed upon him in a dream that the 



VARIANTS OF THE TALE OF THE KINGS 49 

babe born to his peasant host that night would be 
his successor on the throne. Taking his faithful 
squire into his confidence and obtaining possession 
of the motherless babe, they bore it away in a 

" Rough box four square, 
Made of old wood and lined with hay." 

As they crossed the bridge that spanned the river 
on their homeward journey the child was tossed 
into the stream: 

" Adown this water shall he float 
With this rough box for ark and boat, 
Then if mine old line he must spill 
There let God save him if He will." 

Fourteen years passed and the child was then 
discovered to have been found and reared by the 
miller's wife. The king's squire is then sent to 
assassinate him. He is left in the swamp to die 
from his wound, rescued by Father Adrian, and 
educated at the Abbey. One more attempt is 
made upon his life by the king, which is foiled 
by his own daughter, who marries and makes a 



50 VARIANTS OF THE TALE OF THE KINGS 

king of the young man, and he lives to reign in 
an era of such good and precious years that 

" Scarce a man would stop to gaze 
At gold crowns hung above the ways." 

King Gudea reigned long after Sargon L, and 
under him art reached its highest development in 
Babylonia. Many statues of him were found at 
Tello, and an inscription upon one of them recalls 
the story of the water-carrier, Akki, who rescued 
Sargon from the river. It reads: "Mother I 
had not; my mother was the water deep. A 
father I had not; my father was the water deep." 

There are incidents in the traditional story of 
Romulus, reputed founder of Rome, not unlike 
those told of Sargon and Moses. Amulius, king 
of Alba Longa, was descended from lulus, son of 
Trojan iEneas. He had usurped the throne from 
his brother, Numitor, murdered his son and made 
a vestal virgin of his daughter lest his brother's 
heirs should contest his right to the throne. The 
daughter, violated by Mars, gave birth to the 
twins Romulus and Remus, who, by order of the 



VARIANTS OF THE TALE OF THE KINGS 5 1 

king, were thrown into the river with their 
mother. The stream was a branch of the Tiber, 
into which the cradle with the children drifted 
and was stranded upon its bank. The children 
were picked up by a wolf and cared for until 
rescued by a shepherd of the king, who carried 
them to his wife, Acca, by whom they were 
reared. 

Akrisios, king of Argos, had been told by an 
oracle that he would be supplanted by the son 
whom his virgin daughter, Danas, would bear; 
and to forestall such a fate Akrisios confined his 
daughter in a brazen tower where no man could 
approach her. She was visited, however, by the 
god Jupiter, and bore Perseus. The babe and 
mother, enclosed in an ark or chest and thrown 
into the sea, were carried by the waves and tide 
to the island home of King Polydektes, and res- 
cued by Diktys, brother of the king, who had 
discovered the chest while upon, a fishing excur- 
sion. King Polydektes wooed and persecuted the 
mother; and later on, thinking to effect the death 
of the son, he sent him after the head of Medusa, 



52 VARIANTS OF THE TALE OF THE KINGS 

the Gorgon which having secured, Perseus takes 
revenge upon the king by turning him into stone 
and setting upon the throne the faithful brother, 
Diktys, who had rescued himself and his mother 
from the sea, and remained loyal to them after- 
wards. Perseus then returned to his old home in 
Argos, where a quoit which he threw fell acci- 
dentally upon the foot of his grandsire, Akrisios, 
causing his death, and the prophecy of the oracle 
was fulfilled. 

The cradle and the river are wanting in the 
traditions of the Trojan Paris and the Persian 
Cyrus, but there are incidents in the biographical 
tales of each of them which bear a strong re- 
semblance to those of other heroes already given. 
Paris was carried up to Mount Ida and aban- 
doned to his fate. Five days afterwards the shep- 
herd Agelaus found the babe alive and reared 
him as his own child. As Romulus was nourished 
by the she-wolf on the banks of the Tiber, so 
Paris was fed by a she-bear on the mountain. 

Like Paris, Cyrus was forsaken on the moun- 
tain, and rescued by the shepherd of the king, who 



VARIANTS OF THE TALE OF THE KINGS 53 

adopted him as his own child and secretly reared 
him. Before the birth of Cyrus it was foretold 
that he would overthrow the Median kingdom of 
his grandfather, Astyages, and conquer Asia; 
it was to ward off this calamity that the child 
was abandoned to his fate. So Hecuba, the wife 
of Priam, king of Troy, had dreamed before the 
birth of Paris of bringing forth a firebrand which 
caused the destruction of the city ; and, to prevent 
the fulfillment of this ominous dream, it was de- 
creed by the king that the child at its birth should 
be destroyed. 

A tale of the Midrash tells that before the birth 
of Moses Pharaoh dreamed that, as he sat upon 
his throne, an old man appeared before him hold- 
ing a balance; in one side of it he put all the 
princes and elders and nobles of his kingdom, 
and all the inhabitants of Egypt ; in the other side 
of the balance he put a young babe, which out- 
weighed them all. This was interpreted by 
Balaam to mean that a child would be born to 
the Hebrews that threatened great danger to all 
Egypt; and on his advice the king issued a decree 



54 VARIANTS OF THE TALE OF THE KINGS 

that all their newborn children should be thrown 
into the river. 

The mothers of Cyrus, Sargon, Romulus, and 
Perseus were the daughters of kings. The fathers 
of Sargon and Romulus were unknown; the 
father of Cyrus was not of the royal family, and 
Moses was the son of an unknown Levite. 

It is told in the legends of Moses that on ac- 
count of his exceeding beauty of person everyone 
who saw him was filled with admiration, and 
cried out, " This is the king's son," and that with 
chaplets of diamonds surrounding his brows, and 
arrayed in purple, he passed through the streets, 
consorting only with princes. So it was said of 
Cyrus that his royal descent was revealed by his 
personal beauty and bravery. The comeliness of 
Romulus was marked, and the fascinating beauty 
of Paris was the ruin of Helen. 

Young Romulus led the shepherds against wild 
beasts and robbers. The youthful Moses slew an 
Egyptian and hid him in the sand for smiting a 
Hebrew. Sargon became the leader of the rustic 
foresters, and when Cyrus was a mere lad the 



VARIANTS OF THE TALE OF THE KINGS 55 

shepherd boys chose him for their king. Young 
Paris led the herdsmen on the mountain, and was 
surnamed Alexander on account of his bravery. 

Paris learned that the blood of kings ran in 
his veins; returned to participate in the fight at 
Troy; and his rape of the wife of Menelaus 
caused the destruction of his people. Romulus 
dethroned the usurper, restored his grandfather 
to the government of Alba Longa, founded the 
great city which bears his name, and kidnaped the 
daughters of his neighbors for wives for his fol- 
lowers. " Sargon, the great King, the King of 
Agani," as his inscriptions say, founded cities, and 
peopled them with the races which he conquered. 
Moses returned to his own people and became 
their leader and hero. He conquered the Midian- 
ites, and slew their king; male and female of 
them were slain, all save their virgin daughters, 
who were appropriated by command of their chief, 
as spoils for the victors. 

The mother of Romulus became the wife of a 
river-god, and Paris married the daughter of one. 

The omens of the flight of birds dictated the 



56 VARIANTS OF THE TALE OF THE KINGS 

founding of Rome. The omens of the moon 
directed S argon in the subjugation of Babylonia 
and the founding of Agani. Moses was led by 
the pillar of cloud by day, and the pillar of fire 
by night. 

Romulus slew King Acron with his own hands, 
and dedicated his arms and armor to Jupiter; 
the god Mars was his reputed father. Sargon 
styled himself the servant of Bel-Merodach, 
and his annals speak of him as the " vicar of 
the gods of Babylon." He built the temple 
of Ekur at Nippur for the service of Bel, and 
" Sargon, the son of Bel," is part of the inscrip- 
tion of the diorite door-socket resurrected from 
its ruins. Moses became the divinely chosen 
leader of the Israelites through whom the com- 
mands of Jehovah were made known, and he 
builded and consecrated to him the tabernacle 
in the wilderness. A veil separated the holy 
of holies from the holy place in the taber- 
nacle, as it had done in the great temple 
of Bel-Merodach in Babylon long before. The 
morning and evening sacrifice, the meat and 



VARIANTS OF THE TALE OF THE KINGS 57 

drink offering, the freewill offering, the sin of- 
fering, and the showbread and the peace offering 
became part of the ritual service of the tabernacle, 
as they had been of the temple. 

On the monumental inscription of Sargon his 
prosperity and glory are attributed to the favor 
of Ishtar, the Babylonian Venus. The decision 
of Paris which gave the golden apple to Aphro- 
dite (Venus) was the spark that lighted the 
flames of Troy. When Paris challenged and 
fought with Menelaus before its walls, Venus 
surrounded him with a cloud, snatched him away, 
and laid him down in his chamber " fresh and 
sweet," to save him from the sword of the Spar- 
tan king. It was Venus who bade ^neas, the 
ancestor of Romulus, to save his family from 
destruction by fleeing from Troy. It was the 
jealous foes of Venus who pursued and harassed 
the fleeing Trojans, and Rome was permitted, 
only because so far away from Troy that " endless 
billows roll between, and storms unnumbered 
roar." 

Moses' death and burial was in the land of 



58 VARIANTS OF THE TALE OF THE KINGS 

Moab, and no man knoweth the place of his 
sepulcher, says the sacred story of the Hebrews. 
A story of the Talmud says that God bent over 
the face of Moses and kissed him, and the soul 
leaped up in joy and went with the kiss of God to 
Paradise, while a dark cloud draped the heavens 
and the wind wailed. Moses had ruled the 
Israelites forty years. It is also told that when 
Romulus had reigned thirty-seven years death 
came to him in this manner : While reviewing his 
people one day on the Campus Martius, the sun 
was eclipsed, and the people were dispersed in the 
accompanying storm and darkness. When day- 
light returned it was found that Romulus had 
been carried away by Mars in a fiery chariot. 

"Such were the paths that .Rome's great founder trod, 
When in a whirlwind snatched on high, 
He shook off dull mortality, 
And lost the monarch in the god." 2 

" How long," Professor Rhys Davids asks, 
" does it take a people, perfectly, sincerely and 

2 Horace, book iii. ode 3 (translation of Addison). 



VARIANTS OF THE TALE OF THE KINGS 59 

honestly, to believe in the divine fatherhood of 
their hero, in his immaculate conception, in the 
extraordinary and even supernatural instances of 
the precocity of the child, and so on through all 
the list?" 

It is said that iEsculapius was human in 
Homer's time, and just the "blameless physician," 
but later was given the attributes of a god, re- 
stored the dead to life, and was finally killed by 
Jupiter with a flash of lightning at the request 
of Pluto, king of the dead, who asked it for fear 
there would be none to people his realms while 
^sculapius lived. 

iEsculapius, too, was cared for by shepherds 
when an infant, having been exposed on the 
Mount of Myrtles. His sire was a god, and 
the virgin mother who bore him, when she looked 
upon the babe, according to Ovid, foretold his 
future greatness: 

"Hail! great Physician of the world! all hail! 
Hail, mighty infant, who in years to come 
Shall heal the nations and defraud the tomb! 



60 VARIANTS OF THE TALE OF THE KINGS 

Thy daring art shall animate the dead, 
And draw the thunder on thy guilty head; 
Then shalt thou die, but from the dark abode 
Shalt rise victorious, and be twice a god." 3 

Like Moses, Sargon, Romulus, and Perseus, 
Bacchus was picked up in a box that floated on the 
water. He was divinely begotten, and nourished 
in a cave. At birth a blaze of light shone round 
his cradle. He was educated by shepherds and 
wrought miracles with a rod which, like Aaron, 
he turned into a serpent at his pleasure. He 
divided the waters of Orontes and Hydaspus, 
and passed through them. At his death he was 
torn into pieces and ascended to heaven while the 
sun was eclipsed and darkened. 

A legend of the Mandans which is given by 
George Catlin says that O-kee-hee-da, the evil 
spirit, the black fellow, came to the Mandan 
village with Mu-mohk-muck-a-nah from the 
west, and sat down by a one-eyed woman who 
was hoeing corn. When the pretty daughter of 

3 " Metamorphoses " (translation of Addison). 



VARIANTS OF THE TALE OF THE KINGS 6 1 

the woman came up to them she ate and drank 
with the evil spirit, partaking with him of some 
buffalo meat which he took out of his side. She 
then went off to a secret place and bore a won- 
derful child, whom Mu-mohk-muck-a-nah was 
bent on destroying. After long search he dis- 
covered the place of its hiding and threw it into 
the river, but the child was rescued and lived to 
perform great miracles in the time of a famine, 
when from four buffaloes the Mandan village was 
filled by him with meat, and all feasted upon it, 
after which there was found to be as much left as 
there was at the beginning. 

From hymns and traditions of the ancient 
Mexicans it is learned that Chimalipan was the 
virgin mother of Huitzilopochtli, the war god of 
the Aztecs. She was divinely impregnated by 
the descending spirit of the All-father in the shape 
of a bunch of feathers. The child was born on 
the serpent mountain, Coatepetl, where he 
ripened into age, when he became skilled in magic, 
inspired terror when he shouted, became lord 
of battles, hurled serpents, and shook the earth. 



62 VARIANTS OF THE TALE OF THE KINGS 

How-tsiH was the ancestor of the Chow dy- 
nasty. He is celebrated in the old Chinese 
sacred songs as an agricultural hero, and as the 
first who gave thank offerings for the harvest. 
Some authorities have made his mother the prin- 
cess consort of the Emperor Kuh (2435-2357 
B. C), but according to others How-tsih belongs 
to a period about two centuries later. His 
miraculous conception is affirmed in an ode of 
their classic poetry: 

" Our folk's first origin 

Is dated from Kiang Y'tin. 
(Now sing we) how this origin occurred: — 

Once worshiping was she, 

Praying, ' Pity childless me,' 
Then, treading on God's toe-print, she was stirred; 
This brought her blessing, brought her rest, — 

Conception, — privacy ; 

Then came an infant to her breast; 

That infant was How-tsih." 4 

From the unfavorable omens at the child's birth 

4 "The Shi King," book ii. part ii. ode 1 (translation 
of William Jennings). 



VARIANTS OF THE TALE OF THE KINGS 63 

the mother was convinced that the child ought 
not to live, and she sought to compass his death 
by exposure: 

" Once in a narrow lane exposed, 
The sheep and oxen round him closed, 
And sheltered with their loving care. 
Again, the woodman found him where 
In a wide forest he was placed 
And bore him from the darksome waste. 
On the cold ice exposed once more, 
A bird beneath the child and o'er, 
Stretched its great wings." 5 

It is asserted that the child looked intelligent and 
majestic when he was able to creep, and that 
when he was grown enough to feed himself he 
began the cultivation of beans and grain. 

It is said that Ahriman and his demons tried 
in vain to prevent the birth of Zoroaster, and 
then fled. All nature rejoiced at the event; trees 
and rivers thrilled with gladness; divine light 
shone around the house ; loud laughter burst from 
the babe as he came into the world, and the throb- 
5 Ibid. (Dr. Legge's translation.) 



«'— V— »*>*■« -+ i " ' » > i ■ ■ ■ , ■ 1 1 ■ m m ■■ » 1 i » m* » m ■ '» 1 , 1 »■« 1 %t> 



64 VARIANTS OF THE TALE OF THE KINGS 

bing of his brain presaged his future wisdom. A 
splendid ox gifted with speech had foretold his 
birth three centuries before. Glory descended 
from the holy one and abided with the mother to 
such an extent that she was thought to be be- 
witched. The conception of the mother was 
effected in spite of the demons by the aid of a 
drink prepared by archangels. Again miracle 
turned aside the poniard stroke of an assassin when 
the child lay in its cradle. It was exposed to be 
trodden to death by oxen, and the leader of the 
herd stood over the babe and protected it from the 
rest. Wolves refused to do it harm, and the 
poison of sorcerers had no effect upon it. The 
babe was suckled by a sheep in a den of wolves. 
When the lad grew to seven years he was placed 
in the care of the wise Aganaces — a name which 
recalls that of Akki the water-carrier who 
rescued Sargon, and Acca, the wife of the king's 
shepherd who saved Romulus, and Agelaus, the 
shepherd that reared Paris. 

Tradition says that the boy Zoroaster put to 
confusion the wise magicians who contended with 



VARIANTS OF THE TALE OF THE KINGS 65 

him ; that he lived on a mountain in a cave which 
was divinely illuminated ; that as he set out on his 
ministry with some of his relatives they passed 
through a sea whose waters were lowered by 
miracle so as to allow them to cross without 
danger. Greek and Roman tradition teaches 
that he was killed by a flame from heaven, but a 
later legend says that he was a magician and con- 
jured with the stars, and the guardian spirit of a 
certain star which was angry at his control of it 
sent a flame from heaven to destroy him. 

Krishna was cradled among shepherds, and his 
great feats were first made known to them, his 
companions falling prostrate before him. The 
prophets, hearing of his fame and visiting him, 
examined the stars and pronounced him of 
celestial descent. From the Magi he received 
divine honors and gifts of sandalwood and per- 
fumes. It was said that he was born in a cave, 
or a dungeon, of royal descent, his birth being 
concealed through fear of the reigning tyrant, 
Kansa, who, at the time of his birth, ordered all 
the male children to be slain. A voice from 



66 VARIANTS OF THE TALE OF THE KINGS 

heaven whispered to his foster father to fly across 
the river Jumna. Representations of the flight 
and escape are pictured on the walls of Hindu 
temples. The chaste virgin Devaki was his 
mother, and the light which invested her was so 
great that no one could look upon her. The 
whole cave was illumined at his birth, and cow- 
herds prostrated themselves before him, after- 
wards choosing him for their king. A serpent 
having stung his playfellows, he immediately re- 
stored them. His foster father was absent from 
home at the time of the child's birth, having gone 
to pay his yearly tax. The teachers of the lad 
were perplexed by his wisdom. The sun was 
darkened, and the sky rained fire and ashes at his 
death. He descended into hell, rose again, and 
was transfigured before his disciple Arjuna. 

The name of the mother of Buddha is given 
in the later texts as Maya, who died when he 
was seven days old, an aunt bringing up the 
child. He had no earthly father, though later 
documents speak of him as a king. He descended 
of his own accord into his mother's womb from 
heaven, and at his birth the trees of their own 



VARIANTS OF THE TALE OF THE KINGS 67 

will bent over the mother, who was the best and 
purest of women. Abandoning home and wife 
and child, he went out as a wanderer upon his 
mission, and when it was ended legend says that 
he ascended bodily, and left on the rocks of a high 
mountain the last impressions of his footsteps on 
earth. " Similar legends," says Professor Rhys 
Davids, " are related of all the founders of the 
great religions, and even of the more famous 
kings and conquerors in the ancient world." He 
believes that it is a necessity of the human mind 
that such legends should grow in a certain stage 
of intellectual progress. 6 

The Roman historian Suetonius says that 
shortly before the birth of Augustus Caesar, the 
prodigies indicated that a king was about to be 
born, which so alarmed the senate that they 
passed a resolution that no child born in that year 
should be allowed to live. When his body was 
burnt on the Campus Martius one of praetorian 
rank affirmed upon oath that he saw his spirit 
ascend from the funeral pile to heaven; and, 

6 " Buddhism : American Lectures on the History of 
Religions," p. 94. 



68 VARIANTS OF THE TALE OF THE KINGS 

during the games which Augustus instituted, con- 
secrated to the memory of Julius Caesar, it was 
affirmed that a comet which blazed for seven suc- 
cessive days was the soul of the great king, now 
received into heaven. 

Apocryphal story has located the birth of Jesus 
in a dark cave supernaturally illuminated like 
that in which Zoroaster lived, and says that when 
Mary held the child in her lap the dragons which 
came up out of the cave adored the child and 
harmed them not. The babe had the gift of 
speech in the cradle, and told his parents to fear 
not, as all the wild beasts would grow tame be- 
fore him. Lions and leopards going with him 
showed him the way and bowed their heads in 
adoration. The palm tree bent down its 
branches at his command so that the fruit thereof 
might refresh the mother, and it waited his order 
to rise again. Robbers fled before him; the lep- 
rous-tainted demoniac was healed by the touch 
of the babe's swaddling band, and the dragon 
which had tormented the mother was put to 
flight. 



VARIANTS OF THE TALE OF THE KINGS 69 

A valuable contribution was made to the study 
of this interesting subject by the discovery of a 
papyrus in Upper Egypt in 1895, which is now 
in the British Museum. It has been translated 
by Mr. F. L. Griffith. Kha-m-uas, eldest son of 
Rameses II., was high priest of Ptah at Memphis 
about 1250 B. C. He died in the fifty-fifth year 
of the long reign of his father. From the thir- 
teenth year of that reign he was conspicuous in 
the celebration of national festivals. The wife of 
Kha-m-uas was also his sister, and was childless. 
She was directed in a dream to go to the lavatory 
of her husband, where she would find a melon 
vine, with which she must prepare a medicine for 
him; after this she would bear him a son who 
would work many marvels in Egypt. As the name 
by which the son of Mary should be known was 
revealed by an angel to Joseph, it was likewise 
made known to the high priest of Memphis that 
the child to be born into his household would be 
known as Si-Osiris (son of Osiris). The babe 
grew big and strong, and soon began to puzzle 
the scribes in the House of Life in the temple of 



. 



70 VARIANTS OF THE TALE OF THE KINGS 

Ptah. At twelve he surpassed all in Egypt in 
reading and interpreting books of magic and, 
with his father, he entered the underworld and 
discoursed of its marvels. He could read and 
interpret letters without breaking the seals, or 
any book in his father's library without seeing 
it. He could cast his magic and cause a thick 
darkness for three days throughout all the land 
of Egypt, and could turn the waters and the 
heavens to the color of blood. The son of Kha- 
m-uas was the champion of Egypt against the 
Ethiopian magicians, as Moses was of the 
Hebrews against the Egyptian magicians. There 
are intimations in the record, however, that Si- 
Osiris was really a re-incarnation of an older 
wise man, Hor, " the son of the negress," and 
that he had been rescued from the reeds of Ra 
(the Nile) ; and so the tale of the grandson of 
Rameses merges with that of the ever-recurring 
story of the ark and the river. Finally, from the 
hand of Pharaoh and his father, Kha-m-uas the 
son of Osiris passed away as a shade, and no 
man saw him. 



NOTES ON FAITHS AND 

FOLK-LORE OF 

THE MOON 



NOTES ON FAITHS AND FOLK- 
LORE OF THE MOON. 

From the earliest ages the moon has been the 
object of serious contemplation by the learned 
and the unlearned. Moon worship has been al- 
most universal* with earlier peoples. Has moon 
worship or sun worship had priority in the his- 
tory of mankind? The moon has taken prece- 
dence in the pantheon of deities at first in some of 
the older civilizations, and then in later times it 
has been superseded by the sun. Both sun and 
moon have figured in the dawn of philosophy as 
living beings, supernatural, yet endowed more or 
less with human attributes. 

We commonly speak of the moon as feminine, 
though our word moon probably comes from the 
Anglo-Saxon mona, which is masculine. In old 
Norse the neuter noun tungal, or tungl, means 
the moon. The word comes from tunga, the 
73 



74 FAITHS AND FOLK-LORE OF THE MOON 

tongue. Grimm says: "The moon and some 
of the planets, when partially illuminated, do 
present the appearance of a tongue or a sickle, 
and very likely some cosmogonic belief was en- 
grafted on that." The Norse mani was a mascu- 
line name for the moon. The sun and moon are 
spoken of as brother and sister in the Edda. The 
Mexican meztli, moon, is a man. Moon is femi- 
nine in English, French, Latin, Greek, and 
Italian; it is masculine in Egyptian, Sanskrit, 
Arabian, and with the Slavs and Lithuanians. 

According to a Scotch lexicographer, the moon, 
as husband of the earth, is masculine ; but as bride 
of the sun, is feminine. Greenlanders speak of 
Anningat, the moon, as pursuing his sister Mal- 
lina, the sun. 

The moon has been the object of exaltation 
by lovers and the inspiration of poets and versi- 
fiers in all climes and ages. Chango was the 
goddess of " the palace of the moon " among the 
Chinese. Some lines of one of their verse writers 
as put in metrical form by Mr. G. C. Stent read 
as follows: 



FAITHS AND FOLK-LORE OF THE MOON 75 

" On a gold throne whose radiating brightness 

Dazzles the eyes — enhaloing the scene, 
Sits a fair form, arrayed in snowy whiteness. 

She is Chango, the beauteous Fairy Queen. 
Rainbow-winged angels softly hover o'er her, 

Forming a canopy above the throne; 
A host of fairy beings stand before her, 

Each robed in light, and girt with meteor zone." 

To a Japanese poet of the eighth century is 
credited this bit of verse: 

" The sky is a sea 
Where the cloud-billows rise; 
And the moon is a bark: 
To the groves of the stars 
It is oaring its way." 1 

The idea that the beauty of the autumn moon 
is so entrancing that people sit up during the 
night to gaze upon it and then must needs take 
sleep to make up for it in the daytime is ex- 
pressed in a verse by a later Japanese author: 

1 " A History of Japanese Literature," p. 48 (transla- 
tion of W. G. Aston). 



76 FAITHS AND FOLK-LORE OF THE MOON 

" For all men 
'Tis the seed of siesta — 
The autumn moon." 2 

Among some tribes of northwestern New 
Guinea, when the men are gone on a long journey 
the women left at home sing to the moon, begin- 
ning a few days before the new moon and con- 
tinuing about the same length of time after its 
appearance. The reason alleged for it is that if 
they did not do so some sickness or misfortune 
would befall their husbands. 

Some of the endearing terms with which the 
infatuated Endymion of Keats invokes the moon 
are " winged chieftain," " meekest dove of 
heaven," " the charm of women," and " the gent- 
lier-mightiest " of all things " 'twixt nothing and 
creation." 

" O Moon ! the oldest shades 'mong oldest trees 
Feel palpitations when thou lookest in; 
O Moon ! Old boughs lisp forth a holier din 
The while they feel thine airy fellowship. 
Thou dost bless everywhere, with silver lip 
Kissing dead things to life. 

2 Ibid., p. 290. 



FAITHS AND FOLK-LORE OF THE MOON 77 

What is there in thee, Moon ! that thou shouldst move 
My heart so potently? When yet a child 
I oft have dried my tears when thou hast smiled. 
Thou seem'dst my sister; hand in hand we went 
From eve to morn across the firmament." 

Shelley writes of the moon in " The Cloud " as 

" That orbed maiden with white fire laden, 
Whom mortals call the moon." 

In his rendering of Homer's hymn his invocation 
begins : 

"Hail, Queen, great Moon, white-armed Divinity!" 
And again he says: 

" Bright wanderer, fair coquette of heaven, 
To whom alone it has been given 
To change and be adored forever." 

The waning moon is 

" Like a dying lady, lean and pale, 
Who totters forth, wrapt in a gauzy veil, 
Out of her chamber, led by the insane 
And feeble wanderings of her fading brain." 



78 FAITHS AND FOLK-LORE OF THE MOON 

The moon in " Prometheus Unbound " is 
" the crystal paramour " of earth, 

" Whose weak brain is overladen 
With the pleasure of her love." 

Ashtoreth, the principal female deity of the an- 
cient Phoenicians, was a moon goddess, and she 
was invoked as the queen of heaven. Milton refers 
to " mooned Ashtoreth," in the " Hymn of the 
Nativity," as " heaven's queen and mother both." 

Hebrew idolaters, defying the prophet, de- 
clared their intention of doing as their fathers and 
princes in their prosperity had done before them; 
for, said they, " Since we left off to burn incense 
to the queen of heaven, and to pour out drink- 
offerings unto her, we have wanted all things, and 
have been consumed by the sword and by the 
famine." 

The moon is invoked in an Accadian hymn, 
written on a tablet now in the British Museum: 

" Father, god enlightening earth ! lord god of the 
month, of gods the prince! 
Father, god enlightening the earth; lord of Ur, of 
gods the prince." 



FAITHS AND FOLK-LORE OF THE MOON 79 

Sin, the male moon god of Babylon, was the first 
of the second triad, and one of the great twelve. 
His principal seat of worship was at Ur. He 
was the son of Bel of Nippur, and the father of 
Shamas, the sun god. . Isaiah speaks of the land 
of Sinim, and from the name Sinai, which was 
given to its mountain, it is conjectured that it 
must have been at one time sacred to the moon 
god and connected with his worship. Ishtar was 
called the daughter of the moon god and sister 
of the sun god in one of the hymns to her. Sin, 
with his children, Shamas and Ishtar, guarded 
the approach to heaven when it was threatened by 
the seven evil spirits. Terra cotta cylinders of 
Nabonidus, which were found in the corners of 
the temple of the moon at Ur, bore an inscription 
invoking the god as " chief of the gods of heaven 
and earth and king of the stars." A tablet of 
Nebuchadnezzar says that he built for the moon 
god, the strengthener of his hands, a large house 
of alabaster for a temple in Babylon. Tiglath 
Pileser I. enumerated, among the great gods who 
were guardians of his kingdom, Sin, " the lord of 



80 FAITHS AND FOLK-LORE OF THE MOON 

empire " ; Shamas, " the vanquisher of enemies 
and the dissolver of cold"; and Ishtar, "the 
queen of victory." 

Ishtar was sometimes represented as the full 
moon. She was also called the goddess 15, as 
the moon was full on the fifteenth or middle of 
the lunar month. Thoth, the chief moon god of 
the Egyptians, was the scribe of the gods. He 
wrote sacred books, " calculated the heaven and 
counted the stars." He bore the disk and the 
crescent of the moon. An inscription to him de- 
clares, " All eyes are open to thee and all men 
worship thee." 

Chonsu, another moon god, was the reckoner 
of time; for the moon was the great measurer of 
time for man in more primitive ages. Max 
Miiller has traced European names of the moon 
to the root ma, meaning the measurer. The 
moon determined the sacrifices and the seasons. 
" Season-sacrificer " was an ancient name for 
priest. The moon divided the year and divided 
the month. Month is but another form for 
moon, and Monday is moonday. The Arabs 



FAITHS AND FOLK-LORE OF THE MOON 8 1 

made twenty-eight lunar divisions of the month; 
the Chinese twenty-four, afterwards twenty- 
eight; and the Hindus twenty-seven, then 
twenty-eight. Sennight and fortnight are sur- 
vivals of time-measurement by nights and moons. 
The old Roman festival to Venus began at sun- 
set the last day of March and lasted three days, 
and most likely originated as a new moon festi- 
val. The ides, nones, and kalends are believed 
to have marked the new, full, and quarter 
moons when time was measured by lunar 
months. 

Weeks are subdivisions of the time from one 
new moon to another into approximately equal di- 
visions. Our word week is traced to an Anglo- 
Saxon word signifying increase. Society Island- 
ers and Maoris have no weeks, but count time 
by moons. The Japanese and Aztecs divide the 
months into six weeks of five days. The ancient 
Greeks had three weeks of ten days. Some 
African tribes have seven weeks of four days. 
Other tribes have no division of the month into 
weeks, but observe Sabbaths of the new moon. A 



82 FAITHS AND FOLK-LORE OF THE MOON 

sacrifice to their ancestors began the new moon 
festival in Vedic India, offerings being made of 
round cakes and water. This was also part of 
the full moon service. Sabbaths of the new 
moon were holy days among the ancient Israelites, 
and feasts of the new moon are referred to many 
times. It was not lawful to sell corn at those 
times. Saul missed David at the feast of the new 
moon, and Jonathan gave as an excuse for his 
absence, that he had gone to attend a family 
sacrifice. 

Among the Mayas the first day of Pop, 
which corresponded to our July 16, was the 
beginning of the new year. It was celebrated 
with religious ceremonies and with cakes and 
balche, the nectar of the gods. The agapae of 
the early Christian Church, which were held in 
connection with the monthly communion, con- 
sisted of evening services in which charity was 
bestowed, and the death of relatives commemo- 
rated. 

The mysteries of the Straddha were said to 
have been revealed to the Hindus by Manu. It, 



FAITHS AND FOLK-LORE OF THE MOON 83 

too, consisted fn ceremonies commemorating the 
departed. An offering to the fathers was part 
of the ceremony. The festival of the loaves of 
the moon is an ancient one in China, and is 
celebrated on the fifteenth of the eighth month. 
Cakes stamped with the image of the moon are 
baked, and these are interchanged between rela- 
tives and friends. The Hebrews had a similar 
ceremony. " Seest thou not what they do in the 
cities of Judah and in the streets of Jerusalem? 
The children gather wood, and the fathers kindle 
the fire, and the woman knead their dough, to 
make cakes to the queen of heaven, and to pour 
out drink offerings unto other gods." The Zend 
Avesta says : " We sacrifice unto the new moon, 
the holy, and master of holiness. We sacri- 
fice unto the full moon, the holy, and master 
of holiness." Mr. Dennys has called atten- 
tion to a custom found in a part of Lan- 
cashire, England, of making cakes in honor 
of the queen of heaven, like that ancient one 
in China. Is the Eucharist in the Christian 
Church a survival of these ancient festivals in 



84 FAITHS AND FOLK-LORE OF THE MOON 

honor of the moon? The agapae, originally 
belonging to the festival of the Lord's Supper, I 
were occasions for the interchange of gifts and 
perpetuating memories of the dead, and retained 
these features after their formal separation from 
the Communion by the Council which condemned 
them at Carthage in 397. The clergy were for- 
bidden to take any part in them, and they were 
banished from the Church. Tea-meetings with 
praise and prayer were substituted for them by 
some Protestant sects, and the almost universally 
adopted custom of occasional or monthly church 
suppers has taken the place once occupied by the 
forgotten agapae. 

It is an old belief that the moon is the abode of 
departed souls. Isis expresses the wish that the 
soul of Osiris may rise to heaven in the disk of 
the moon. Some of the South American tribes 
say that the moon is the home of chiefs and medi- 
cine men. Dante refers to the moon as the lady 
who reigns in the infernal regions. Tupper has 
voiced the conception of the moon as the seat of 
hell: 



FAITHS AND FOLK-LORE OF THE MOON 85 

" I know thee well, O Moon, thou cavern'd realm, 
Sad Satellite, thou giant ash of death, 
Blot on God's firmament, pale home of crime, 
Scarr'd prison-house of sin, where damned souls 
Feed upon punishment. Oh, thought sublime, 
That amid night's black deeds, when evil prowls 
Through the broad world, thou, watching sinners 

well, 
Glarest o'er all, the wakeful eye of Hell." 

Plutarch held that earth furnished man his body, 
the moon his soul, and the sun his mind ; the first 
death took place on the earth, the second in the 
moon. In the former the soul is separated from 
the body hastily and with violence; in the latter 
Persephone gently and slowly loosens the mind 
from the soul. The soul upon leaving the body 
was supposed to wander for a time in the region 
lying between the moon and the earth. The 
length of this period depended in some measure 
upon the character and transgressions of the in- 
dividual. The goal once reached and a firm 
footing secured in the moon, the souls were 
crowned with wreaths, like victors in the games, 



86 FAITHS AND FOLK-LORE OF THE MOON 

and they acquired tone and vigor in the high air 
which surrounded them. In the deep places or 
gulfs in the moon was Hecate's dungeon. In 
this souls suffered punishment for what they 
had done, or they inflicted it upon others for what 
had been done to them. Wayward souls, which, 
after becoming separated from the mind, become 
destitute of reason and subject to passion, the 
moon absorbs into itself and reduces to order. 
" The moon takes and gives, and puts together 
and separates;" the sun impregnates the mind 
with vital force, and new souls are produced; 
while Clotho, one of the Fates, moves about the 
moon, uniting and mingling the various parts. 

The Manicheans held that the souls of the 
dead were purified in the sun, and carried to the 
moon by angels; and that the increase and dim- 
inution of this freight caused the phases of the 
moon. The moon was the food of the gods, in 
some Indian beliefs; when the souls of the dead 
were carried to the moon, it was enlarged; when 
these had been eaten by the gods the moon waned 
again. Many Aryan peoples made the moon the 



FAITHS AND FOLK-LORE OF THE MOON 87 

abode of the fathers. The Chinese say that some 
of their ancestors came from the moon. 

A crescent moon was worn by the Greeks to 
protect from the evil eye. Similar ornaments 
were worn by the Hebrews. Isaiah says : " In 
that day the Lord will take away the bravery of 
their tinkling ornaments about their feet, and 
their cauls, and their round tires like the moon." 

The Cherokee held their autumn festival after 
the first new moon. It was then that the exor- 
cists drove away evil. At the new moon of the 
autumnal equinox the Incas fasted and drove 
disease and trouble from the capital. 

The moon was wife and sister of the sun in 
Peruvian mythology. She was the mother of the 
Incas, and had a temple near that of the sun at 
Cuzco. A pyramid to the moon has been found 
in the ruins of an ancient city some thirty miles 
from Mexico. The Peruvians thought the moon 
was sick at the time of an eclipse ; and they made 
great noise to bring her out of her stupor. The 
Mayas said she had been bitten by a savage ant, 
and they tried to frighten it away from her. 



88 FAITHS AND FOLK-LORE OF THE MOON 

From South America to Greenland there was a 
custom of thrashing the dogs when the moon 
was eclipsed. Some native tribes believed she 
had then fallen into the grasp of a giant, or 
demon, or serpent, which would destroy or swal- 
low her if not driven away, and Greenlanders 
carry boxes and kettles to the tops of their houses 
and beat on them as hard as possible, during this 
time. In some Oriental myths monsters with 
their upper parts like men and their lower parts 
like serpents lie in wait for the sun and moon. 
Others say it is the king of hell that tries to 
swallow the moon. The Ossets shoot at the 
malignant monster flying in the air which they 
say causes the eclipse. The Creek Indians 
thought it was a big dog that was trying to swal- 
low the moon. The Malays said it was the 
demon Rahu that occasionally swallowed the 
luminaries. The lower part of this four-armed 
demon ended in a tail. Disguised as a god he 
stole the nectar which the gods churned from the 
ocean. The moon reported it to Vishnu, who 
cut off the head and two of the arms of the 



FAITHS AND FOLK-LORE OF THE MOON 89 

monster, but the drink of the gods had made 
head and tail immortal, and these were trans- 
ferred to the stellar sphere, where the head took 
vengeance on sun and moon by swallowing them, 
and the tail gave birth to a progeny of comets and 
meteors. 

Dogs were sacred to Isis, the moon goddess in 
Egypt, and they were used in the sacrifices made 
to the statues of Hecate before the new moon, at 
the crossing of the streets, in ancient Athens. 
j^Eneas and the priestesses sacrificed to the god- 
dess who was queen of heaven and hell, and 
mother of the Furies, before their descent into the 
infernal regions. The full moon rising from the 
sea was probably the origin of the conception of 
the Greek Aphrodite, who sprang from the foam 
of the sea with garlands of rose and myrtle, and 
a chariot drawn by milk-white swans. 

When Tammuz was slain by the boar's tusk, 
Ishtar, the daughter of the moon god, turned her 
mind to the land of Hades, where the moon 
reigned. The inconsolable Venus went thither 
after Adonis, and it was permitted her that she 



90 FAITHS AND FOLK-LORE OF THE MOON 

should live the seasons alternately on earth and 
in the shades. The story is but that of the 
waxing and the waning of the moon. 

The " gall of goat and slips of yew " that were 
put into the witches' caldron were " silvered in 
the moon's eclipse." Hecate told her companions 
that a " vaporous drop profound " hung 

" Upon the corner of the moon," 

which, if caught before touching the ground and 
distilled by magic, would raise " artificial 
sprightes," which would draw Macbeth on to 
his confusion. 

The fern known as moonwort was reputed to 
have magical properties because of the crescent 
form of the segments of its frond. Famous as- 
trologers credited it with the power of undoing 
locks and unshoeing horses. Wither says of it: 

" There is a herb, some say, whose virtue's such 
It in the pasture, only with a touch, 
Unshoes the new-shod steed." 

Turner was confident that moonwort " bee the 



FAITHS AND FOLK-LORE OF THE MOON 9 1 

moon's herb, yet it is neither smith, farrier, nor 
picklock." 

Astrologists and alchemists have associated sil- 
ver with the moon from ancient times. The 
Latin for moon survives in our term for fused 
nitrate of silver. Silver was used in moon wor- 
ship in Peru, her statues being made of it. There 
were silver shrines for Artemis, the Greek Diana. 
Luna and Diana were both names for moon, or 
silver. Both Livy and Tacitus speak of temples 
to Luna. Horace calls her the queen of the 
stars. It is an old proverb that it is a sign of ill 
luck to see the moon without silver in the pocket. 

It is an old sign of good luck to see the new 
moon on Monday, or moon day. Money counted 
at the new moon increases. Healing herbs are 
gathered at the new moon. Tacitus says that 
the Germani thought the new or full moon the 
most auspicious for beginning any enterprise. 
Their councils were held at one or the other. 
Caesar says that wise women reported in the camp 
of Ariovistus that it was not the will of heaven 
for the Germans to be defeated if they fought at 



92 FAITHS AND FOLK-LORE OF THE MOON 

the new moon. Pausanias said it was the cus- 
tom of the Lacedaemonians not to begin a cam- 
paign till the moon was full. Odysseus himself 
foretold that he would return and take ven- 
geance on the destroyers of his home as the old 
moon waned and the new was born. 

Mungo Park reported that the Africans 
thought it was unlucky to begin a journey in the 
last quarter of the moon. A new moon seen 
over the right shoulder is lucky, over the left un- 
lucky. The Greeks thought the full moon most 
propitious for marriage. There is a Teutonic 
saying that no bride shall move in when the moon 
is on the wane, but wealth she will win who 
comes riding through the rain. Another one 
says, " Let a wedding be at full moon, or the 
marriage is not blest." 

The following lines were put by Chaucer into 
the mouth of Troilus when he told " al his so row 
to the moone " : 

" I saw thine homes old eke by that morow, 
When hence rode my right lady dere, 
That cause be of my turment and my sorow, 



FAITHS AND FOLK-LORE OF THE MOON 93 

For whiche, O bright Lucina the clere, 
For love of God ren fast about thy sphere, 
For when thine homes newe ginnen spring, 
Then shall she come that may my blisse bring." 

Chinese legend makes the man in the moon the 
governor of marriages, who ties men and women 
together with invisible cords of silk. Icelandic 
legend says that dreams come quickly to pass in 
the new of the moon, but in the old they are 
more slowly fulfilled. 

The Syrian Lucian, who wrote his " Trips to 
the Moon " in the second Christian century, says 
of the inhabitants: " They all eat the same food, 
which is frogs roasted on the ashes from a large 
fire ; of these they have plenty, which fly about in 
the air; they get together over the coals, snuff up 
the scent of them, and this serves them for vic- 
tuals. Their drink is air squeezed into a cup, 
which produces a kind of dew." The inhabi- 
tants do not die, but when a man grows old he 
dissolves into smoke, and turns to air. Verily 
Lucian's imagination seems to have had a pre- 
monition of the process of liquifying air. It 



94 FAITHS AND FOLK-LORE OF THE MOON 

seems not far fetched that frogs should fly in the 
air of the moon when we remember that tradi- 
tion has persistently made the moon the ruler of 
the waters and the goddess of moisture. 

Soma, the moon, was the reservoir of the drink 
of the gods, in the mythology of India. During 
the light half of the moon the gods are drinking 
the nectar. " When the gods drink thee, O god," 
says the hymn, " thou increasest again." Soma, 
the warrior equipped to fight the darkness of 
night, descends into the soma plant, giving up 
his own body to be broken for the good of gods 
and men who take the sacred drink. 

A tradition of the Australians says that the 
Creator tied the land to a corner of the moon 
with twisted walrus hide, but, becoming angry 
with mankind, he cut the rope, and all were 
drowned except a couple who were out fishing on 
the waters; and these repeopled the world, tying 
the land again to the moon. 

There is an Irish saying that the sun is a 
coward, who flees at the approach of darkness, 
but the moon, bolder, stays with us during the 



FAITHS AND FOLK-LORE OF THE MOON 95 

night. The sun and moon are spirits of the 
dead among the Eskimo. The Chibchacs say 
the moon did evil on the earth, and, as a punish- 
ment, she is compelled to wander during the night, 
and not appear during the day. According to an 
Aztec account of creation, the sun and moon 
were at first equally bright, which angered some 
of the gods, who slung a hare at the moon, and 
the mark of it still remains. A Buddhist story 
makes Sakyamuni a hare at one stage of his exist- 
ence; then he gave himself up to be food for the 
starving, and was carried to the moon. A Taoist 
fable has it that the hare in the moon is the serv- 
ant of genii who keep it compounding drugs, 
which, when mixed, produce the elixir of life. 
When compounding the drugs he squats at the 
foot of a sacred tree which grows in the moon. 
A Hottentot legend says that the man in the 
moon once sent the hare to the earth with tidings 
of his own resurrection from the dead, and as- 
surance that all would do likewise; but the hare 
getting the message reversed, the man in the 
moon was angry and struck it with an ax, split- 



96 FAITHS AND FOLK-LORE OF THE MOON 

ting open its lip. A young woman with a rabbit 
at her feet is one of the emblems of the moon 
with the Chinese. 

An old Norse legend says that a boy and a girl, 
Hiuki and Bil, were once carrying water in a 
pail suspended on a pole, and they were stolen 
by Mani, the moon, and carried up to heaven. 
Swedish peasants still see in the moon spots this 
boy and girl with their bucket and pole; and the 
story of the stolen children still survives in every 
household in the nursery rhyme of Jack and Gill. 
The breaking of the crown of Jack and the mis- 
fortunes of Gill are but the vanishing spots of 
the waning moon. 

Quince instructs the players in " Pyramus and 
Thisbe " that one must come on the stage with a 
bunch of thorns and a lantern to represent the 
moon. There is a Talmudic tradition that 
Jacob is in the moon; one from the French says 
Judas was transported to the moon; again the 
man in the moon is Isaac with wood for sacrifice 
on Mount Moriah; another says that it is Cain 
with an offering of thorns. The last tradition 



FAITHS AND FOLK-LORE OF THE MOON 97 

is alluded to by Dante in both the Inferno and 
Paradise : 

" But tell me what the dusky spots may be 
Upon this body, which below on earth 
Make people tell the fabulous tale of Cain ? " 3 

A document of Edward III. dated in the ninth 
century is preserved, to which is attached a seal, 
the device of which is a man carrying a bundle 
of fagots on his back with the inscription : " I 
will teach you, Walter, why I carry thorns in 
the moon." The explanations are endless of the 
conception of a man in the moon with a bundle 
of sticks. He was banished to the moon for 
gathering fagots on Sunday; he strewed thorns 
in the path of people going to mass; he stole 
cabbages, or sheep, or willow boughs on Sunday; 
or it is a woman that made butter on that <, day. 
When Caliban asks Stephano if he has not 
dropped from heaven, he answers : " Out o' the 
moon, I do assure thee. I was the man in the 

3 "Paradise," ii. 51 (Longfellow's translation). 



98 FAITHS AND FOLK-LORE OF THE MOON 

moon when time was." " I have seen thee in 
her," says Caliban, "and I do adore thee; my 
mistress showed me thee, thy dog and bush." 

It is a conception of the Malays that the spots 
in the moon are an inverted banyan tree, under- 
neath which an aged hunchback is seated plaiting 
strands of tree bark into a fishline. 

Bacon thought the humours in a man's body 
increased and decreased as the moon waxed and 
waned, and that the moon grew more moist and 
full at the full of the moon. An old ballad says of 
the reddish appearance of the moon at times, that 
the man in it has then been drinking claret, and 
too much of it has made his face red. A quota- 
tion which Plutarch makes from Hegesinax is 
translated : 

" With fire she shines all round, but in the midst 
More blue than black appears a maiden's face 
And moistened cheeks, that blush to meet the gaze." 

There is an allusion to the monthly rebirth of 
the moon in a hymn of Isis to Osiris : 



FAITHS AND FOLK-LORE OF THE MOON 99 

" Thou who cometh to us as a child each month, 
We do not cease to contemplate thee." 

Osiris is here identified as the moon. We have 
the authority of Plutarch that he was regarded 
as a moon deity by some of the ancient Egyptians. 
Mr. Frazer regards him as a god of vegetation. 
Probably once a living king, he was deified at 
death and made the ruler of the underworld. 

The subject of the Greek riddle of Kleoboulos 
was the death and rebirth effected by the rotation 
of the lunar months: 

" One is the father, and twelve the children, and born 
unto each one, 

Maidens thirty, whose form in twain is parted asun- 
der, 

White to behold on the one side, black to behold on 
the other, 

All immortal in being, yet doomed to dwindle and 
perish." 4 

The Greek Io was represented as a heifer or by 
the figure of a woman with the head and horns of 

4 "Primitive Culture" (E. B. Tylor, 93). 



IOO FAITHS AND FOLK-LORE OF THE MOON 

a heifer; and the Egyptian Isis bore on her head 
horns and a disk, conceptions which doubtless 
originated in the horned appearance of the young 
moon. 

The moon was an exacting deity evermore to be 
appeased, and unusual appearances were care- 
fully observed by her worshipers, that they might 
be prepared to forestall whatever calamities 
threatened them. It is known from the language 
of the Psalmist that the Hebrews held the night 
in some fear lest the moon should smite them. 
The belief persists in modern times that unusual 
astronomical events are attended with danger. A 
proclamation of the Chinese emperor in 1898 on 
the occasion of an eclipse of the moon admonished 
his subjects to " humble themselves before 
heaven in order to avert the wrath from 
above." 

Many believe that changes in the moon aggra- 
vate certain diseases. The Brazilian mother 
shields her child from the moon's rays lest they 
make it sick. Sprengle attributed such beliefs 
to the primitive medical theory of ancient Egypt 



FAITHS AND FOLK-LORE OF THE MOON IOI 

that disease was the effect of the anger of the 
moon and a punishment for sin, as leprosy was 
with the ancient Israelites. Lunacy is named 
from the moon. The fairy queen says in " A 
Midsummer Night's Dream " that " rheumatic 
diseases do abound " because the moon " pale in 
her anger washes all the air." 

The Egyptian moon god Chonsu expelled evil 
spirits from the demoniacally possessed in the reign 
of Rameses XII. His image was sent in the 
sacred ark from Thebes to Assyria to cure the 
daughter of King Bakhton. A sandstone tablet 
in the Bibliotheque Nationale at Paris records 
that the princess was found to be possessed with 
demons. After a sojourn of three years, four 
months and five days in the land of King Bakh- 
ton, like a hawk of gold, the god came out of his 
shrine and flew on high back to the Egyptian 
realm. Waffles made of flour mixed with the 
water of Lourdes and shaped in the form of the 
Madonna and child are sold as a specific for de- 
moniacal possession; and if, as contended by 
Grant Allen and others, the figures of Isis and 



102 FAITHS AND FOLK-LORE OF THE MOON 

Horus in Egyptian museums are prototypes of the 
Madonna and child in Christian art, there is a 
suggestion, at least, of the older medical theory 
of the Nile in this modern specific of Lourdes. 

Alexander of Tralles, a Greek physician of 
the sixth century, approved of an incantation for 
the gout, consisting of certain words written on 
gold leaf in the wane of the moon. A medical 
work of the fifteenth century says: "In the 
furste begynynge of the mone it is profetable to 
yche man to be letten blode: ye ix. of the 
mone, neyther by nyght ne by day, it is not 
good." 

Bede's " Ecclesiastical History," written about 
700 A. D., records that a bishop, who had been 
asked to bless a sick maiden, inquired when she 
had been bled, and, being told that it was on 
the fourth day of the moon, said: "You did 
very indiscreetly and unskillfully to bleed her on 
the fourth day of the moon, for I remember that 
Archbishop Theodore, of blessed memory, said 
that bleeding at that time was very dangerous, 
when the light of the moon and the tide of the 



FAITHS AND FOLK-LORE OF THE MOON 103 

ocean are increasing; and what can I do to the 
girl if she is like to die? " 

Butler satirizes in " Hudibras " those who claim 
to know when the moon is in fittest mood for cut- 
ting corns or letting blood. In 1791 Sir John 
Sinclair wrote of a cave near Dunskey, Scot- 
land, where bewitched, rickety children, after 
bathing in a certain stream, were carried to dry 
in the change of the moon. To look at the new 
moon and say a prayer was formerly a specific 
for the whooping cough; and to rub corns and 
wens at night in the direction the moon travels 
was an old German prescription for the cure of 
them. 

A meteorologist from one of the great ob- 
servatories has come forward in recent times with 
dates and diagrams to show that variations in 
the electrical condition of the atmosphere are in. 
accord with the position of the moon in her orbit. 
Who then shall say that some future scientist 
may not yet rise up to justify the tradition of the 
centuries, and confirm the deeply-rooted and an- 
cient faith in the moon as a potent factor in 



104 FAITHS AND FOLK-LORE OF THE MOON 

regulating the seasons and in the practice of the 
healing art? 

" All things by immortal power, 

Near or far, 

Hiddenly 
To each other linked are, 
That thou canst not stir a flower 
Without troubling of a star." 5 

5 Francis Thompson in the " Mistress of Vision." 



EPICS BEFORE THE 
ILIAD 



EPICS BEFORE THE ILIAD 

Less than three-fourths of a century ago the 
traveler along the banks of the Tigris or in the 
valley of the Euphrates would have come upon 
many curious and interesting mounds, forty, 
fifty, or even one hundred and fifty feet high, 
and some of them a thousand feet in length, but 
would have passed on, as ignorant of their con- 
tents as all the rest of mankind were at that time. 
Botta, the pioneer explorer, began excavating at 
Khorsabad in 1842. The ruined palace which 
he exposed a short distance below the surface 
proved to have belonged to a suburb of ancient 
Nineveh. His successors, Layard and Rassam, 
continued the work at Nimrud and Kouyunjik, 
finding in the latter place large rooms filled with 
rich treasures of clay volumes, subsequently iden- 
tified as the royal library of Nineveh. 

The wedge-shaped characters with which these 
tablets were inscribed on both sides were then 
familiar to travelers in the Orient, and for two 
107 



108 EPICS BEFORE THE ILIAD 

centuries had been the subject of much specula- 
tion and some study. They are now known to 
have been used in the Babylonia-Assyrian king- 
doms for inscribing tablets of iron, stone, bronze, 
glass, and clay as early as 3800 B. C. and down 
to the last quarter of the first Christian century; 
but for some sixteen centuries after they ceased 
to be used their very existence was well-nigh for- 
gotten. Many had come in contact with these 
strange characters among the ruins of the an- 
cient empires, and dreamed not that they had any 
real significance. An ambassador of Spain be- 
came convinced in 16 18 that these strange marks 
were inscriptions in some lost written language. 
Hyde, an Orientalist, in 1700 declared that they 
were nothing more or less than idle fancies of 
the architect. Witte said that they were the de- 
structive work of generations upon generations of 
worms. Two centuries after Philip of Spain's 
ambassador tried unsuccessfully to divine the 
meaning of them, Michaux, a French botanist, 
sent to Paris a stone which he had discovered 
near the Tigris. It is now known to have been 



EPICS BEFORE THE ILIAD 109 

prepared to commemorate the gifts of a father 
to his daughter at her marriage. There were 
ninety-five lines of cuneiform text in its inscrip- 
tions. It was published during the following 
year, and attracted the attention of scholars, but 
it was yet more than half a century before the 
translation of it was perfected. Georg Fried- 
rich Grotefend, a teacher in the public school at 
Gottingen, became interested in the decipherment 
of cuneiforms in 1802, and discoveries he made 
led eventually to the key of its interpretation. 

For twenty years the tablets and fragments of 
tablets which Layard and Rassam had disinterred 
on the banks of the Tigris lay in the British 
Museum, and the world was unconscious of their 
great importance. Two years before Botta 
struck the mound at Khorsabad a boy was born 
in London who was destined thirty years after- 
ward to make known to the world the inestimable 
value of these literary treasures, and to make for 
himself a name and fame as explorer and scholar. 
George Smith was appointed assistant in the de- 
partment of antiquities in the British Museum in 



^ 



IIO EPICS BEFORE THE ILIAD 

1867, and five years later came upon one-half of 
a whitish-yellow tablet, each face of which was 
divided into three columns. In one of them he 
read: "On the Mount Nizir the ship stood 
still; then I took a dove and let her fly ;_ the dove 
flew hither and thither, but finding no resting 
place, returned to the ship." Conscious of the 
value of his discovery, he began a systematic 
search for the continuation of the narrative among 
the thousands of fragments which had been 
gathered in the Museum. With infinite pains 
the broken tablets were pieced together, and he 
learned that the story of the deluge was only an 
incident of a great national poem of the Baby- 
lonians. It was written in twelve books, and 
consisted of about three thousand lines. Mr. 
Smith gave the name Izdubar provisionally to 
the hero whose adventures were recorded there- 
in, and also identified him with the Nimrod of 
Genesis. The same year he was commissioned 
by the London Daily Telegraph to lead an ex- 
pedition to the Orient and continue his investiga- 
tions. A second and a third visit followed; 



EPICS BEFORE THE ILIAD III 

during the last he died suddenly at Aleppo, 
August 19, 1876. 

About a dozen other fragments of tablets be- 
longing to this series were found by him in his 
explorations in Assyria, but there are gaps in the 
story yet which have never been filled. Four dis- 
tinct copies are represented on the fragments, 
but no perfect series of tablets has yet been found. 
It is now well known that these clay volumes 
formed part of the library of King Ashurbanipal. 
They are inscribed at the bottom : " The prop- 
erty of Ashurbanipal, King of hosts, King of 
the land of Ashur." 

Mr. Smith's identification of the hero of the 
poem with the Nimrod of the Hebrews is now 
abandoned by scholars, though it is conceded that 
both have some like characteristics ascribed to 
them. Izdubar has also given way to Gilga- 
mesh, and the " Epic of Gilgamesh " is the name, 
perhaps, by which the heroic poem will be per- 
manently known. 

Dr. Morris Jastrow says the Oriental love of 
story-telling has produced the epic, and that it, 



112 EPICS BEFORE THE ILIAD 

like a true story, grew in length the oftener it 
was told; yet both Drs. Jastrow and Erdmans 
agree that there are historical elements in it. 
The former thinks there is no reason to question 
the existence of an ancient king or hero who bore 
the name of Gilgamesh. * The popularity of the 
hero is attested by his deification, and by the in- 
troduction of his name in incantations, and by 
special hymns composed in his honor. He ap- 
pears with a large lance on seal cylinders. Credit 
is due Professor Paul Haupt for a complete pub- 
lication of the fragments of the tablets, as well as 
for the arrangement and interpretation of them. 
The heroic achievements of Gilgamesh are ar- 
ranged in this poem according to the passage of 
the sun through the signs of the zodiac. The 
eleventh of the series is known as the Deluge tab- 
let, and it corresponds to the sign Aquarius. The 
mysteries of the past have not yet been unveiled 
sufficiently to reveal the author or authors of 

1 " Religion of Babylonia and Assyria," Morris Jas- 
trow, 470, 494; "Religion of Babylonia and Assyria," 
B. D. Erdmans, in " Progress," vol. iii. p. 403. 



EPICS BEFORE THE ILIAD 113 

these interesting books. Quite likely they are a 
composite production. The poem may have at- 
tained its final shape by a process of accretion, or 
the several parts may have been eventually welded 
into one serial by some master artist. 

There is no definite knowledge of the time of 
the events which constitute whatever historic basis 
there is for the adventures ascribed to the hero of 
the epic. It is believed to be true that the real Gil- 
gamesh at some time in the distant past led the 
people in a successful struggle for freedom against 
the Elamites. We do not know when it was. 
Professor Jastrow places the historical events of 
the poem beyond the third millennium B. C. 
Professor Delitzsch says that a written account 
of the Babylonian deluge existed as early as 2000 
B. C. Mr. Simcox says that a cylinder of the 
middle period of archaic art, which according to 
Hommel was 4000-2800 B. C, shows the legend 
of Gilgamesh already developed. 2 

2 " Religion of Babylonia and Assyria," Morris Jas- 
trow, 473 ; " Babel and Bible," Friedrich Delitzsch, 
44 ; " Primitive Civilizations," E. J. Simcox, vol. i. 262. 



114 EPICS BEFORE THE ILIAD 

The library of Sardanapalus or Ashurbanipal, 
the last great king of the Assyrian Empire (668- 
626 B. C.)j was the medium through which this 
epic came down to us from a more distant past. 
We are told by the king that he founded this 
library for the benefit of his subjects. It is be- 
lieved that one of the objects in view was to hold 
the youth away from Babylon or Borsippa, where 
they were liable to be affected by hostile political 
influences; and this danger might be avoided by 
giving them all the opportunities at home that the 
older libraries could furnish them there. It is 
also expressly stated by the king that these tab- 
lets, including the Gilgamesh story, were copies 
of those in the temple of Ishtar at Erech. Our 
only version of the epic, therefore, is that of this 
library. 

Much was anticipated at one time from the 
revelations of the library of the ancient temple 
at Nippur, but these hopes have not yet material- 
ized. We do know from the military annals of 
Ashurbanipal that Erech was sacked by a king of 
Elam in 2294 B. C, and the treasures of the 



EPICS BEFORE THE ILIAD 115 

temple of Ishtar were carried away as spoils. 
How long before this the Elamite oppression be- 
gan, or how long after this it lasted, is unknown; 3 
as is also, what connection, if any, this event may 
have had with the historical incident of the poem. 
Tablets of the period of Ashurbanipal com- 
memorate him for his great love of learning and 
culture. The inscriptions of some of them give 
thanks to Nabu, the wise, who inspired him with 
a desire for wisdom. Credit is given to this 
god for leading the monarch to gather and care 
for these treasures. Whatever may have been 
the motives, his memory will be kindly honored 
forever for the collection and preservation of 
these precious writings, which, after being lost 
for twenty-five centuries, are again restored to 
the world. We now know that some of the 
deeds of the hero of the epic gave coloring to the 
tales of the Hebrew heroes, Samson and Nim- 
rod, and through the Phoenicians reached and in- 
spired the story-tellers of the Greeks, and were in- 
corporated to some extent in the achievements of 
3 " Nippur," John P. Peters, ii. 255. 



Il6 EPICS BEFORE THE ILIAD 

Hercules and the biography of Alexander the 
Great. 

The godlike character of Gilgamesh appears 
in the hymns to his honor, in which he is described 
as one who judges and gives decisions like a god, 
whom kings, chiefs, and princes bow before; he 
is " overseer of all regions, ruler of the world, 
lord of what is on earth." He is said to be 
master of witchcraft, who knows all that sorcer- 
ers do, and is able to destroy the mischief which 
they have wrought. 

The opening lines of the epic are lost; but in 
the beginning of the tale in the fragments pre- 
served the center of action is at Erech, or Uruk, 
now Warka, which was at this period a city of 
great importance in southern Babylonia. It was 
a walled or fortified city, and was the special seat 
of the worship of Ishtar. Rival cities to the 
south of it were Ur and Eridu, and Nippur and 
Babylon in the north. At this time the city is 
threatened by a powerful enemy. It is not told 
who this enemy was. It is intimated that the 
danger which threatens them is on account of 



EPICS BEFORE THE ILIAD 117 

some great sin of the people. The gates are 
closed ; for three years the city has been besieged ; 
the inhabitants are unable longer to withstand 
the foes without. Gilgamesh comes into the 
story in the second tablet. He is not a native of 
the city, as is learned from the sixth tablet. 
How and when he became its conqueror is un- 
known, but he is now in control of it. The 
people complain bitterly of his oppression and 
tyranny. He has taken away their sons and 
daughters, and torn wives from their husbands. 
In their despair they appeal to the goddess Aruru. 
It was she who created this strong, irresistible 
warrior; she alone is able to create an equal who 
can contend with him. This she is invoked to 
do, and consents to undertake it, for the other 
gods have taken cognizance of the sufferings of 
the people and have united with them in demand- 
ing relief of Aruru. She then washes her hands, 
takes a bit of clay, throws it upon the ground, 
and forms, in the likeness of a god, the creature 
Eabani. He had flowing locks, his body was 
covered with hair, he lived in the fields and mated 



Il8 EPICS BEFORE THE ILIAD 

with the beasts; he ate herbs with gazelles and 
drank with the cattle from the trough. Half 
man and half beast, he had horns on his head, 
the bearded face of a man, and the feet and tail 
of an ox. 

The cunning Gilgamesh, not unaware of the 
interest of the gods in the affairs of Erech, at- 
tempts to thwart their plans. He sends the 
hunter Sadu as a messenger to Eabani, with in- 
structions to ensnare and capture him; but mor- 
tal fear seizes Sadu as he approaches the half- 
human monster, and he returns unsuccessful. 
" Go, hunter mine, and take with thee Ukhat," 
cries Gilgamesh. The beautiful harlot was the 
handmaiden of Ishtar. As she approached, the 
wild man of the woods and caves, abandoning 
his gazelles and herds, yields to the fascination of 
the immodest and unabashed tempter. For six 
days and seven nights she holds him enthralled by 
her charms, his companions of the field forgotten. 
Satiated at last, he returns to his former as- 
sociates, but they no longer recognize him, and 
run away from him. He seeks again the tempter 



EPICS BEFORE THE ILIAD 119 

Ukhat, sits at her feet, looks up into her face, 
and listens as she speaks : 4 

" Lofty art thou, Eabani, like to a god. 
Why dost thou lie with the beasts? 
Come, I will bring thee to walled Uruk, 
To the glorious house, the dwelling of Anu and Ishtar, 
To the seat of Gilgamesh, perfect in power, 
Surpassing men in strength, like a mountain bull." 

She leads him to the city where the great temple 
is, and he becomes the friend and associate of 
Gilgamesh. Together they plan an expedition 
against the mighty Elamite king, Khumbaba, 
whose fortress is a long distance away in the midst 
of a grove of remarkable beauty. Gilgamesh is 
warned in a dream of their final victory, the 
tyrant falls before them, and his fortress is de- 
molished. 

The celebration of the victory is described in 
the sixth tablet. Gilgamesh, the hero, lays aside 
his blood-stained garments, is robed in white, and 
a crown is placed upon his head. The goddess 

4 " The Religion of Babylonia and Assyria," Morris 
Jastrow, 477. 



120 EPICS BEFORE THE ILIAD 

Ishtar is especially attracted by his engaging per- 
sonality and heroic achievements. She throws 
herself at his feet and pleads for his love: 

" Kiss me, Gilgamesh," she said, " for I will marry 
thee! 
Let us live together, I and thou, in one place; 
Thou shalt be my husband and I will be thy wife. 
Thou shalt ride in a chariot of lapis lazuli and gold, 
Whose wheels are golden and its pole resplendent. 
Shining bracelets thou shalt wear every day. 
By our house the cedar trees in green vigor shall grow. 

Kings, Lords, and Princes shall bow down before thee. 
The tribute of hills and plains they shall bring to 

thee as offerings; 
Thy flocks and thy herds shall bear twins; 
Thy race of mules shall be magnificent; 
Thy triumphs in the chariot race shall be proclaimed 

without ceasing, 
And among the chiefs thou shalt never have an 

equal." 5 

The valiant conqueror spurns the proffered love 
of the goddess. His ears are deaf to her promises. 

5 " Records of the Past," ix. 125 (translation of H. 
Fox Talbot). 



EPICS BEFORE THE ILIAD 121 

Treacherous is her crown of divinity; fickle and 
unfaithful, her love has been fatal to all alike, 
high or low, rich or poor. She pulled the teeth, 
seven at a time, of her favorite lion ; she poisoned 
with, drugs her faithful warhorse; she changed 
one of her workmen into a pillar and placed him 
in the midst of the desert. " Lady, thou wouldst 
love me as thou hast done the others," he cries: 

"Tammuz, the consort of thy youth, 
Thou causest to weep every year." 

As Circe transformed the sailors of Odysseus 
into swine, Ishtar is charged by Gilgamesh with 
turning a giant into a dwarf. The touch of her 
wand made into a leopard the king whom she 
loved, and his dogs tore him to pieces, as the in- 
discretion of Action brought upon himself the 
vengeance of Diana, whose beauty he adored. 
One can but believe that these tales of the Greeks 
are in some way allied with these incidents in 
the older epic, or that they have some common 
parentage. 

Not thus shall the scornful object of her 



122 EPICS BEFORE THE ILIAD 

affections escape the power of the jilted goddess. 
She hastens to her father Anu, god of heaven, 
and reports to him the affront she has suffered. 
She implores his assistance, which is freely given. 
The divine bull is created, which is to destroy 
Gilgamesh. Eabani again comes to the assistance 
of his friend, and together they go out to fight 
with the monster. In the artistic representa- 
tions of the event on the cylinders, Eabani grasps 
the bull by the tail and horns while Gilgamesh 
strikes a lance through his heart. Fiercer was 
the wrath and louder the wailing of Ishtar at 
the death of the monster. She curses Gilgamesh 
from the walls of Erech. Eabani responds with 
insulting words and flings the carcass at the god- 
dess. The horns of the sacred Alu are made an 
offering at the altar of Shamash, accompanied 
with gifts of precious stones and oil, and there is 
great rejoicing over the victory. Not yet, how- 
ever, is the angry Ishtar done with them. With 
the assistance of her mother she brings a loath- 
some disease upon Eabani, who lingers a few 
days and dies. His companion in arms weeps 



EPICS BEFORE THE ILIAD 123 

for him; he, too, is stricken with disease, and 
has premonitions of a like fate. Grieving over 
the loss of his friend, and suffering from his 
malady, he wanders away in search of heal- 
ing. 

He recalls that one Parnapishtim escaped the 
fate of mortals. He dwells far away, but Gil- 
gamesh resolves to seek him and learn what he 
may of the future that awaits him. The road is 
full of terrors, but he hesitates not. He strangles 
a lion by the way, as Samson did when he went 
down to Timnath. He encounters the scorpion 
men as he approaches the mountain Mashu. On 
the side of the mountain is the cave where the 
dead dwell, and the scorpion men guard its gate. 
Their feet are below the earth and their heads 
touch the door of heaven. They watch over the 
rising and the setting of the sun. Gilgamesh is 
allowed to pass the gate, for he seems to them no 
common mortal. Groping his way through the 
darkness beyond, at last he arrives at the beautiful 
grove on the shore of the sea which separates 
the living from the dead. The maiden Sabitum, 



124 EPICS BEFORE THE ILIAD 

who guards the entrance to the waters, locks 
her gates and refuses him permission to pass 
beyond. She tells him there is no ferry. 

" How canst thou, O Gilgamesh, traverse the ocean ? 
And after thou hast crossed the waters of death, 
what wilt thou do ? " 

Yet there is one possible chance for him. 
Ardi-Ea, who carried over Parnapishtim, alone 
could help him; if he refused there was no hope. 
Having gained his assistance, together they mount 
the ship, and for many a day are tossed upon the 
dangerous waves. At last he greets Parna- 
pishtim face to face, recounts the tale of his 
woes, the story of his friend, and the end which 
he . fears. He is told in reply how impossible 
it is to escape the fate of mortals; that no 
one can help him; that the great gods deter- 
mine life and death and no one knows the time 
thereof. 

After the meeting of Gilgamesh with Par- 
napishtim the latter becomes the central figure 
in the poem. In the eleventh tablet is recounted 



EPICS BEFORE THE ILIAD 125 

the story of his escape from death, which he 
relates at the request of Gilgamesh: 

" I will tell thee, Gilgamesh, the marvelous story, 
And the decision of the gods I will tell thee." 6 

Then follows the tale of the Chaldean deluge 
so marked in its resemblance to the Biblical 
version of the Noachin flood. Parnapishtim, 
like the Hebrew patriarch, by divine favor was 
warned of the approaching catastrophe, and 
instructed as to the exact dimensions of the ship 
he should construct in order to escape. In the 
Chaldean epic the intent of the gods appears 
at first to have been to destroy only the wicked 
Surippak. Of this city nothing is known. It 
is supposed to have been on the Euphrates. The 
existence of such a city may probably be accepted 
as a fact from the tradition. The gods decided 

6 "Records of the Past," vii. 135 et seq. (translation 
of George Smith) ; " Religion of Babylonia and As- 
syria," Morris Jastrow, 495 et seq. ; " The Story of 
Chaldea," Z. A. Ragozin, 314 et seq. (from the Ger- 
man of Paul Haupt). 



126 EPICS BEFORE THE ILIAD 

to punish them,* so corrupt were they. One 
recalls the Biblical passage, " And God looked 
upon the earth, and, behold, it was cor- 
rupt." 

We are told that all the great gods participated 
in the council and all approved of the decision, 
or at least consented to it, except the wise and 
beneficent Ea, who threatened to proclaim it 
aloud to " reed hut and clay structure." He 
did actually, for some reason unexplained, give 
information of the divine plan to Parnapishtim. 
" Listen," he said, " and attend! Man of Surip- 
pak, son of Ubaratutu, go out of thy house and 
build thee a ship . . . then enter the ship 
and bring into it thy store of grain, all thy prop- 
erty, thy family, thy men servants and thy 
women servants, and also thy next of kin. The 
cattle of the fields, the wild beasts of the fields, 
I shall send to thee myself, that they may be safe 
behind thy door." Ready and willing to obey 
the voice of the god, Parnapishtim yet fears the 
speech of people: "If I construct the ship as 
thou biddest me, O Lord, the people and their 



EPICS BEFORE THE ILIAD 127 

elders will laugh at me." And this is what the 
god instructed him to say to them: 

" Bel has cast me out in his hatred, 
So that I can no longer dwell in your city. 
On Bel's territory I dare no longer show my face; 
Therefore I go to the deep to dwell with Ea, my 
lord." 

Bel's domain was the earth and Ea ruled the 
sea, and, once in the ship and afloat upon the 
water, Parnapishtim, the friend of the latter, 
was safe from the power of the former. 

With six floors, one above the other, and each 
divided into seven compartments, the structure 
was completed and smeared with bitumen out- 
side and in. Some of " every living thing of 
all flesh " were taken within, and all his gold 
and silver and seed of every kind. Then a 
voice said: "The appointed time has come; 
this evening the heavens will rain destruction, 
wherefore go thou into the ship and close the 
door." Terrified, he obeyed; the ship and its 
freight were turned over to the care of its pilot. 



128 EPICS BEFORE THE ILIAD 

Then a great black cloud rose from the depths 
of the heavens and Ramman thundered in the 
midst of it. The whirlwinds were let loose, 
light was turned into darkness, and confusion 
and devastation filled the earth. The very gods 
in the heavens were afraid and crouched by the 
railings. Ishtar cried aloud with sorrow, groan- 
ing " like a woman in throes," and lamenting 
that she had ever given her consent to this devas- 
tation. Six days and seven nights wind, flood, 
and storm reigned supreme, but at the dawn of 
the seventh the violence of the tempest decreased 
and the rain ceased. Parnapishtim opened a 
porthole, the light of day fell upon his face, and 
he shivered and wept; for they were floating 
upon a terrible sea where land once had been, 
and corpses were drifting about like logs. Going 
aground on Mount Nizir, on the seventh day 
he sent out a dove, which finding no resting 
place returned. Then a swallow went forth, 
and it too returned. " And he sent forth a raven, 
and when it saw that the waters had abated, it 
came near again, cautiously wading through the 



EPICS BEFORE THE ILIAD 129 

water, but it did not return." The animals 
went out from the ship and all the living creat- 
ures. Parnapishtim, like Noah, builded an altar 
upon the summit of the mountain, and sacrificed 
to the gods. They smelled the sweet savor and 
drew near to the sacrifice. Ishtar spread on 
high the great bow of her father Anu, and swore 
by her necklace never to forget these days. The 
gods counsel together. Bel is still in anger that 
his plans have been thwarted and some have 
escaped. The kind Ea admonishes him that it 
would have been better to have punished only 
evil-doers; to have let pestilence waste the land, 
or famine smite it; to have permitted lions and 
tigers to destroy men rather than that such a 
calamity should have been so ruthlessly decreed 
for the destruction of all mankind. Evidently 
the storm had gone beyond the wicked city of 
Surippak, for which alone it was at first designed. 
The angry Bel was brought to a more kindly 
feeling by the council of the gods. He gave 
his consent that Parnapishtim should become 
immortal like them. He took him by the hand 



130 EPICS BEFORE THE ILIAD 

and gave his blessing. Immortality was con- 
ferred likewise upon his wife; but their home 
must be in a distant land by the mouth of the 
rivers. " Then they took me," says Parnapishtim, 
" and placed me in the distance, at the conflu- 
ence of the streams." 

After finishing the recital of his experiences, 
the attention of Parnapishtim and his wife is 
turned to their sick guest. He falls into a 
stupor which lasts many days and nights. The 
wife prepares a charm with some plant through 
which he is roused from his insensible condition, 
but he is not yet healed ; his body is covered with 
sores; the magic potion must be followed by an 
immersion in the fountain of life. The ferry- 
man is instructed to take him thither that he 
may bathe in the wholesome waters and become 
white as snow. Then he will be ready to return 
to his own country; but before his departure he 
is informed of that wonderful plant which 
wounds like a thistle and restores youth again 
to the old. Gilgamesh secures the plant, but it 
falls again from his grasp, and is snatched away 



EPICS BEFORE THE ILIAD 13 1 

by the serpent-demon. With it the hope of 
immortality is lost forever. Healed in body, yet 
mortal, and with old age and death awaiting him, 
he returns to Erech. He seeks to know from 
the gods the fate of his friend Eabani, for whom 
he ceases not to grieve. Nergal kindly opens the 
earth and permits his spirit to -come forth like 
a wind, but it brings no comfort to his living 
friend and former companion; for he can only 
assure him that the spirit of him whose body 
is kindly cared for after death will find rest; 
but one whose spirit is not cared for by anyone 
will be consumed by gnawing hunger; and he 
acts most wisely whom death finds not unpre- 
pared, who has made provision for his proper 
burial. Professor Jastrow justly remarks that 
the " epic ends as unsatisfactorily as the book of 
Job or Ecclesiastes." 

It is now known that there were accounts 
of the Babylonian Deluge other than the one 
the hero of which came from Surippak. This is 
shown by the fragments of the cylinder found by 
Pere Scheil at Sippara, which bears a date 2 140 



132 EPICS BEFORE THE ILIAD 

B. C, and is itself a copy. This Sippara version 
of the Flood varies somewhat from that of the 
tablets which Ashurbanipal copied from the 
library at Erech, and it forms the tenth chapter 
of the story instead of the eleventh. This, too, 
is poetical in form, and makes it seem probable 
that different localities may have each had their 
own heroic rendering of this episode of the 
Babylonican epic. 

Another series of tablets which were found 
in the library of Ashurbanipal constitute what 
is known as the Creation Epic. It is also called 
the Epic of Marduk, as its theme is the exalta- 
tion of Marduk to supremacy in the pantheon 
of gods. Marduk is the hero of the story. This 
fact furnishes the clue to what is known of 
its age. Until the cult of Marduk came into 
prominence in Babylonia such an epic could not 
have been written, though it is not impossible 
that the same incidents or legends may have been 
incorporated into a similar story long before, in 
which some older Babylonian deity was the 
central figure. The first mention of Marduk 



EPICS BEFORE THE ILIAD 1 33 

appears in the inscriptions of Hammurabi. After 
the union of the Babylonian states under his 
control, Marduk comes quickly into prominence. 
When the conquests of Hammurabi made Baby- 
lon the center of power and influence, its local 
deity shared the fortunes of the conqueror and 
gradually assumed the place which had been occu- 
pied by the older Bel of Nippur. It may be 
assumed then that the story of these tablets took 
their present form in a period not earlier than 
the reign of Hammurabi, 2250 B. C. The 
tablets of this series are even more fragmentary 
than those of the Gilgamesh epic. It is known 
to have contained seven tablets, and there may 
have been more. In Babylonia, as among the 
Hebrews, there were two current versions of 
the story of creation. Parts of both versions 
have been found, but one of them contains only 
forty lines; fragments of six tablets have been 
discovered of the other, and there are twenty- 
three known fragments of it in all; two other 
fragments may represent yet another form of 
the story. 



134 EPICS BEFORE THE ILIAD 

The inscriptions are metrical, and there are 
fifteen lines in the first tablet of the longer 
series. Creation is not conceived as coming out 
of nothing, for at the beginning, as this unknown 
poet has written, the great waters covered all 
things. Heaven and earth had not yet been 
named, or called into existence. The gods 
themselves had not yet come forth; their names 
were not spoken; their attributes were not 
known. 7 The waters, personified as Apsu and 
Tiamat, were the male and female principles of 
the universe. The outcome of the union of these 
principles was the creation of the gods. First 
came Lakhmu and Lakhamu, who were male 
and female, a pair of monsters, the first product 
of chaos and primeval water. Anshar and 
Kishar were born next. Many days passed and 
Anu, Bel, and Ea, the first Babylonian triad, 
came into being. The ferocious mother, Tiamat, 
the gods themselves feared. She formed an 
alliance with Lakhmu and Lakhamu, her horrible 
progeny, but the universe must be cleared of all 

7 "Records of the Past," ix. 117 (H. Fox Talbot). 



EPICS BEFORE THE ILIAD 135 

these terrible creatures before the planets and 
stars could be set up in the heavens. No vege- 
table or animal life could exist till they were 
subdued. Marduk alone of the gods feared not 
the dreadful Tiamat. Both prepared for an 
inevitable conflict. Tiamat now creates eleven 
other huge and frightful monsters, her consort, 
Kingu, being made chief of them, and upon his 
breast she hangs the tablets of fate. Prepara- 
tions are made for the impending battle which 
is to determine whether chaos shall be subdued, 
the reign of law inaugurated, and an orderly 
universe established. An effort is made to pacify 
the liver and soften the heart of the savage 
mother, and for that end Anu is sent on a mission 
to her; but as he approaches the monster he is 
overcome with fear and runs away. Yet one 
more effort is made for a peaceful settlement, 
and the gods send another messenger to Tiamat, 
but, like the first, he returns unsuccessful. Mar- 
duk is then formally installed by the gods as 
their leader against the forces of chaos. Prepara- 
tory to opening the campaign, the gods assemble 



136 EPICS BEFORE THE ILIAD 

in solemn convocation; they eat bread and drink 
wine ; 

" The sweet wine took away their senses. 
They became drunk and their bodies swelled up." 

The elder gods, Bel and Ea, bestow their bless- 
ing upon the young leader Marduk. They 
pledge- him assurance of victory, and it is per- 
mitted him to perform a miracle and so make 
manifest the power in him. A garment is placed 
in the midst of the gods, and at his command it 
appears and disappears, as the rod in the hands 
of the Hebrew leader was turned into a serpent 
and back to a rod again. Armed and equipped 
for battle, with bow and quiver, storm and 
lightning flash, Marduk mounts his chariot, and 
his fiery steeds are driven straight to the camp 
of the foes. Kingu and his associates are terri- 
fied at the majestic appearance of this brave 
leader of the gods. Tiamat alone is fearless. 
Marduk challenges her to a test in single com- 
bat. She accepts the challenge, and advances 
towards him, repeating sacred formulas and 



EPICS BEFORE THE ILIAD 137 

incantations. The seven winds follow in the 
wake of Marduk as he approaches the monster, 
and when she opens her mouth he forces into 
her the evil and destructive wind before she can 
close her lips. 8 

" He seized the spear and plunged it into her stomach, 
He pierced her entrails, he tore through her heart, 
He seized hold of her and put an end to her life. 
He threw down her carcass and stepped upon her." 

Her associates attempt to flee, but all are cap- 
tured in the net with which Marduk had pre- 
pared to waylay them. The tablets of fate are 
torn from the breast of Kingu, where Tiamat 
had put them, and henceforth they are worn by 
Marduk, who decrees the fate of all the universe. 
The carcass of Tiamat is split lengthwise, and 
one-half of it, like a flattened fish, is used as a 
covering for the heavens. It is bolted in its 
place and a guardian placed over it to make 

8 " Babel and Bible," 48 ; " Religion of Babylonia 
and Assyria," Morris Jastrow, 427. 



I38 EPICS BEFORE THE ILIAD 

secure the waters above the firmament. The 
way is now open for continuing the work of 
creation. The reign of law and order in the 
universe begins, and to the gods are assigned their 
respective districts. To Ea is given charge of 
the waters of the seas, to Bel the earth, and to 
Anu the heavens. Stars are set up in the heavens 
as likenesses of the gods. Laws are established; 
the divisions of the year and the seasons are 
arranged ; the two gates of heaven through which 
the sun passes morning and evening are set up; 
" the moon is appointed to rule the night, and 
to wander through the night, until the dawn 
of day." 9 Bel and Ea are designed to watch 
and guard lest the movements of the heavens go 
amiss. The number of days of creation is not 
specified, as in the Hebrew, yet, according to 
the rendering of the fifth tablet by Talbot, the 
seventh day was appointed as a holy day, and 
" to cease from all business was commanded." 
Earlier forms of the legend make less certain 

9 "Records of the Past," ix. 118 (Fox Talbot's trans- 
lation of the fifth tablet). 



EPICS BEFORE THE ILIAD 1 39 

the connection of the seventh day with creation. 
The fifth tablet is incomplete and little is known 
of the sixth. It is conjectured that the con- 
tinuation of the record describes the creation of 
animals, plants, and mankind. This is indicated 
by some fragments which have been found. 
There is one in which the creation by the gods 
of the cattle and creeping things of the field is 
referred to. Another gives the glory of the 
creation of man to Marduk. He is extolled by 
the other gods as the one who knows the hearts 
of the gods, and rules in truth and justice. Man- 
kind are exhorted never to be unmindful of 
their obligations to him ; and in view of his great 
victory over the monsters of chaos the other gods 
yield up to Marduk their own titles and attri- 
butes. 

The world-wide interest awakened in these 
tablets of the epic of Marduk centers in the 
points of resemblance which they bear to the 
Biblical story of creation. That there is much 
in common between them is conceded by all. 
That the two traditions spring from a common 



140 EPICS BEFORE THE ILIAD 

source, Professor Jastrow says, is so evident as 
to require no further proof; and though the 
Babylonian records are in all probability the older, 
yet he finds in the Hebrew some elements more 
primitive. 

Professor Delitzsch holds that the heroic act 
of Marduk was transferred by the Hebrew poets 
and prophets directly to Jahveh. He finds evi- 
dence of this in such passages as the following : 10 

"Thou didst divide the sea by thy strength; 
thou brakest the heads of the dragons in the waters; 
thou brakest the heads of leviathan in pieces. Thou 
hast broken Rahab [the dragon] in pieces as one that 
is slain; thou hast scattered thine enemies with thy 
strong arm." 

" Awake, awake, put on strength, O arm of Jahveh ! 
awake, as in the ancient days, the generations of old. 
Art thou not it that hewed the dragon in pieces, that 
pierced the monster ? " 

" By his strength he smote the sea, and by his wis- 
dom he dashed in pieces the dragon." 

10 "Babel and Bible," 49; Psalms Ixxiv. 13, 14; 
lxxxix. 10; Isaiah li. 9; Job xxvi. 12. 



EPICS BEFORE THE ILIAD I4I 

This author finds an echo of the contest 
between Marduk and Tiamat in the conflict 
between the Archangel Michael and the " Beast 
of the Abyss " in the Apocalypse of John, and 
in the story of St. George and the dragon, which 
was brought back by the Crusaders from the 
Orient. 

A recent article by Mr. H. H. Howarth in 
the " Proceedings of the Society of Biblical Arch- 
aeology," which is based on an edition of the Cre- 
ation Tablets re-edited by Mr. L. W. King, 
discusses the bearing of the fact that the number 
of tablets in the Babylonian series is the same 
as the number of days of creation of the Hebrews, 
and says that it does not in any way make the 
former a parallel to the Bible story. It may be 
merely accidental that seven is the number of 
tablets. He concedes, however, a close con- 
nection between the two, and says " that a con- 
siderable part of the former [the Jewish] was 
derived from the latter [the Babylonian], I have 
no doubt whatever." With reference to the 
age of the story of the tablets, he is in accord with 



142 EPICS BEFORE THE ILIAD 

Professor Sayce, that it is a late composition and 
in its present form belongs to the period of 
Ashurbanipal. 

If, as more commonly held, the version of 
the epic from Ashurbanipal's library was a 
copy made from records in the older libraries 
of Babjdon or Nippur, there is every reason 
to hope that other translations of tablets now 
known, or continued exploration, will throw 
more light on this interesting subject. 

Some six centuries before the reign of King 
Ashurbanipal there was written in Egypt a 
heroic poem which is one of the most notable 
productions of antiquity. It is sometimes called 
the Egyptian Iliad. Miss Edwards has pro- 
nounced it " the most celebrated masterpiece of 
Egyptian literature." The papyrus containing 
it bears the name of its former owner, M. Sal- 
lier, who is said to have purchased it from an 
Egyptian sailor. It is now one of the treasures 
of the British Museum. Champollion men- 
tioned it in his letters from Egypt in 1833. It 
w T as translated by Vicompte de Rouge in 1856, 



EPICS BEFORE THE ILIAD I43 

by Mr. Goodwin in 1858, and later by Brugsch 
Bey, Professor Lushington, and Maspero. 

The period of its production was from 1200 
to 1400 B. C, known as the nineteenth dynasty, 
which has been called the golden age of Egyp- 
tian history. This epic commemorates the victory 
of Rameses the Great over the allied forces of the 
Khita at the battle of Kadesh. The hero of the 
poem is one of the best known characters in the 
remote past, though, on account of the yet unset- 
tled questions in Egyptian chronology, the exact 
period of his rule upon the Nile has not been 
satisfactorily determined. Homeric scholars can- 
not yet say when Achilles fought at Troy; but 
two or three generations will approximately 
measure the distance between the Greek Iliad 
and that of Egypt. 

Who the real author of the epic is will prob- 
ably never be known. " Done by the royal scribe," 
the papyrus reads. Pentaur, the English ren- 
dering of the name of the scribe associated with 
the poem, is believed by some to have been only 
a court secretary who made copies of it. His 



144 EPICS BEFORE THE ILIAD 

name, however, is inseparably connected with the 
famous work, and for the want of other informa- 
tion regarding its authorship it has been assigned 
to him. 

When not more than ten or twelve years of 
age Rameses II. became associated with his 
father Seti in the government. He had won 
distinction in one campaign before the fight at 
Kadesh, and at that time appears not to have been 
more than seventeen. He is represented in the 
tableaux of the battle on the monuments as a 
mere youth with beard just beginning to 
grow. 

The historical fact is that the king was be- 
trayed into an ambush by the strategy of his 
foes. He was deceived by two Syrian spies, who 
represented that certain of their chiefs wished 
to make an alliance with the Egyptians. Believ- 
ing their story, he pushed onward, accompanied 
only by his personal following, when the enemy 
emerged from their ambush, separating him from 
the main body of his army. Thus isolated, he 
fought bravely and desperately, and succeeded 



EPICS BEFORE THE ILIAD I45 

in breaking their lines and holding them at bay 
till at an opportune moment a part of his army 
came to his rescue. His foes retreated ; and a 
general engagement took place the following 
day,, in which the Egyptians claimed the vic- 
tory. 

With poetical license Pentaur has repre- 
sented the Pharaoh as abandoned by officers and 
men, without princes, generals, captains, or horse- 
men, while twenty-five hundred chariots of the 
enemy encircled him with three men on each 
chariot. His retreat was cut off by all the fight- 
ing men of Aradus, of Mysia, of Aleppo, of 
Caria, of Kadesh, and of Lycia. Their men and 
horses were numerous as the grains of sand upon 
the seashore, and he was left alone to fight the 
foe. " Then said King Rameses, What art thou, 
my father Amen? What father denies his son? 
Sovereign Lord of Egypt, who makes bow down 
the peoples that withstand thee, what are these 
Asiatics to thy heart? Amen brings low them 
who know not God. I am amid multitudes 
unknown, nations gathered against me; I am 



I46 EPICS BEFORE THE ILIAD 

alone, no other with me, my foot and horse have 
left me; I call on thee, my father Amen! " u 

He reminds the" god that he has never done 
aught without him ; has never transgressed the de- 
cisions of his mouth; has made him monuments 
many and filled his temples with the spoils of his 
victories; that he has dedicated to him all his 
conquered lands, and enriched his sacrifices with 
the fruits of his conquests; his foes know not 
the true god; it is he who has built tall gates 
beside the Nile and brought obelisks from Ele- 
phantine; that it has not been told that any other 
king at any time has shown a like devotion. 

The Pharaoh suddenly becomes conscious of 
the presence of the god; he knows that his cry 
has been heard in the temple at Hermonthis; he 
hears a voice behind him: 

" O Rameses, I am here! It is I, thy father! 
My hand is with thee,' and I am more to thee 
than hundreds of thousands. I am the Lord of 
might, who loves valor. I know thy dauntless 

11 "Records of the Past," ii. 69 (translation of E. L. 
Lushington). 



EPICS BEFORE THE ILIAD I47 

heart, and I am content with thee." 12 Like 
" Ra in his rising, shooting flames upon the 
wicked," inspired with the strength of a god, the 
king rushed upon his foes. His arrows flew to 
the right and to the left, and his enemies fell; 
their limbs shook with fear, their hands dropped, 
and their hearts shrank within them; they knew 
not how to use their weapons; one calls to 
another, " Verily, Sutekh, the mighty, is with 
him ; she guides his horses ; her hand is with him ; 
she sends fire to burn their limbs. And they 
fled, and the king pursued them, charging like 
a flame; to the water's edge he drove them, 
and like crocodiles they tumbled in, one upon 
another." 

This epic is believed to have been written 
within a short period after the memorable bat- 
tle. It abounds in exaggerations and repetitions, 
but it evidently met with the highest approval. 
It is apparent that the victory was not so com- 
plete as the eulogistic character of the poem 

12 " Pharaohs, Fellahs and Explorers," Amelia B. 
Edwards, 208. 



I48 EPICS BEFORE THE ILIAD 

would indicate, for a final treaty of peace with 
the Khita was not effected till sixteen years after- 
wards. It was then consummated by the marriage 
of the Pharaoh with a princess of the Khita. 
This famous treaty was inscribed, and still 
remains, on the wall of the temple of Karnak. 

Rameses reigned more than sixty years after 
the fight at Kadesh, and was then laid away with 
his fathers among the Theban hills; but after 
three thousand years his resurrected body lies in 
state in the land which he once ruled. 

Many poems of this ancient people are pre- 
served which were written long before this heroic 
verse. The little book of Ptah-hotep was then 
two thousand years old. The Song of the House 
of King Antep may have been sung at the funeral 
feasts ten centuries before the battle with the 
Khita. The Song of the Harper belonged to the 
preceding dynasty, or was written still earlier. 
The reign of Rameses II. and the succeeding reign 
were prolific in poets, but the author of this epic 
can hardly be ranked with the greatest of them. 
Many beautiful hymns to their gods are pre- 



EPICS BEFORE THE ILIAD 1 49 

served of this period, among which is one to 
Amen-Ra, and one to Ra-harmachis (the sun at 
his rising). 

The reign of Pentaur's hero is one of the most 
interesting epochs of ancient history. Explora- 
tions and research in recent years have added 
greatly to our knowledge of his personality, and 
numerous representations of him in paintings and 
statuary have made us familiar with his features. 
His mummied form measures more than six feet, 
and from his length of limb and powerful build 
it is easy to understand how the Oriental imagin- 
ation could conceive of him as a very god of war. 

The greatness of Rameses as a builder has 
overshadowed his fame as a warrior, but with 
this glory also the fame of Pentaur is inseparably 
connected. On the walls of the principal temples 
are illustrations of the thrilling scenes which 
have been described by the poet in his story of 
the battle with the Khita. Rameses completed 
the temple his father began at Abydos, and caused 
the text of Pentaur's poem to be inscribed upon 
it. He added to the mighty temple begun a 



I50 EPICS BEFORE THE ILIAD 

thousand years before at Karnak, and the poem 
was inscribed upon the walls of its great Hall of 
Columns which his father built. It is written on 
the Ramesseum which Rameses built at Thebes, 
and on that wonder of the world, the temple 
which he carved from the living rock at Abu 
Simbel. Well may it be said that the work of 
no other poet has ever had so costly and enduring 
a setting, or been so lavishly illustrated and 
magnificently published. 



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